Thank God this last bas­tion of our democ­ra­cy is en­shrined in our Con­sti­tu­tion un­der sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers to pro­tect us from an­ar­chy. The ju­di­cia­ry is our on­ly hope for jus­tice at a time when our Par­lia­ment de­lib­er­ate­ly fails to give us this jus­tice. Jus­tice is the es­sen­tial na­ture or con­sti­tu­tion of our na­tion; it is our in­trin­sic ar­te­r­i­al lifeblood whether in pol­i­tics or ad­min­is­tra­tion. With­out it the na­tion's heart is dead.

There is com­mon talk that the in­fa­mous Clause 34 has yield­ed a ben­e­fi­cial ex­pec­ta­tion of free­dom that will hurt us as a na­tion with un­end­ing sor­row, grief and pain and that the courts, even the high­est, shall rule to that free­dom. I beg to dis­agree. We have sev­er­al test cas­es where the courts have struck down leg­is­la­tion as ul­tra vires the Con­sti­tu­tion-mean­ing en­act­ments that are be­yond the scope en­shrined in the Con­sti­tu­tion.

Our Con­sti­tu­tion reads con­ver­sa­tion for na­tion­al jus­tice and Clause 34 with its emp­ty Ex­emp­tion Sched­ule 6 de­void of mon­ey laun­der­ing, cor­rup­tion and scan­dalous fraud-all mat­ters against the State, goes be­yond the scope re­quired for the na­tion to re­ceive jus­tice un­der our Con­sti­tu­tion.

Pro­claim­ing Clause 34 with­out the suf­fi­cien­cy of these ex­emp­tions un­der Sched­ule 6 is enough grounds for the courts to find that Clause 34 is bad law. There can be no ben­e­fits un­der law that is struck down by the court. But there are al­so oth­er twists and turns of bad law like law de­signed to de­ceive, and that is an­oth­er ground for our courts to strike down Clause 34.

Trinidad and To­ba­go may bear the dis­hon­our of hav­ing the pro­to­type of le­gal par­lia­men­tary de­cep­tion. Talk about play­ing smart with fool­ish­ness!

The Op­po­si­tion par­lia­men­tar­i­ans must ap­ply to the court to be made par­ty to the pro­ceed­ings filed un­der Clause 34 and the af­fi­davits of these par­lia­men­tar­i­ans would be ev­i­dence be­fore the court that in or­der to ob­tain their re­quired votes to pass the law, a promise was made to in­clude in the Ex­emp­tion Sched­ule 6 mat­ters against the State such as mon­ey laun­der­ing, cor­rup­tion and scan­dalous fraud and that such in­clu­sion will have been made be­fore the procla­ma­tion of the law.

They will swear the procla­ma­tion was flawed in that it was pre­ma­ture as the promise made to gain the law's ef­fec­tu­al pass­ing votes was not ful­filled. But will they file such an af­fi­davit and thus give the na­tion a chance to get jus­tice, or will they think it po­lit­i­cal­ly ex­pe­di­ent to spec­tate and tem­per their fate with a na­tion reel­ing un­der in­jus­tice mak­ing a change of gov­er­nance? The na­tion watch­es and prays for jus­tice in what is cur­rent­ly a hol­low democ­ra­cy!

Bob­by Gopaul

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