Shal­iza Has­sanali

Mem­bers of the Unit­ed Cli­co Pol­i­cy­hold­ers As­so­ci­a­tion will con­verge to­day to dis­cuss what strat­e­gy they in­tend to take against the Gov­ern­ment with re­gards to cash-strapped Cli­co.Sched­uled to meet at Cen­tre Pointe Mall, Ch­agua­nas at 10 am, the meet­ing will be chaired by se­nior coun­sel Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj.The meet­ing comes two weeks af­ter Ma­haraj filed a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, giv­ing the Gov­ern­ment 21days to re­spond to charges that Win­ston Dook­er­an's plan for Cli­co pol­i­cy­hold­ers was il­le­gal and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

Ma­haraj said the Gov­ern­ment had less than a week to can­cel the plan, which they an­nounced in the Au­gust 2010 bud­get.Ma­haraj ex­plained that two Eng­lish Queens Coun­sels have al­most com­plet­ed draft­ed pro­ceed­ings which will be filed fol­low­ing the ex­pi­ra­tion of the sev­en days."It is an ap­pli­ca­tion for leave to ap­ply for ju­di­cial re­view against the de­ci­sion and pol­i­cy of the Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment not to pay the Cli­co pol­i­cy­hold­ers with ES­PA poli­cies un­til 20 years with no in­ter­ests."

The QCs with whom Ma­haraj has been work­ing close­ly with are ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in Trinidad short­ly."Apart for ap­ply­ing for leave for ju­di­cial re­view, we are go­ing to ask the court for an in­ter­im or­der against the Gov­ern­ment, com­pelling them to pro­vide us with in­for­ma­tion which was re­quest­ed in the pre ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter."The in­for­ma­tion, Ma­haraj said, would re­veal the val­u­a­tion of Cli­co and CL Fi­nan­cial's as­sets and the dis­pens­ing of monies in­ject­ed in­to the or­gan­i­sa­tions by the Gov­ern­ment since 2009.