Geisha Kow­lessar

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan is su­ing Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley for al­leged defama­tion state­ments he made re­gard­ing the de­ci­sion of High Court judge Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh to quash the Unit­ed States ex­tra­di­tion or­der for busi­ness­men Ish Gal­barans­ingh and Steve Fer­gu­son. The two are want­ed in the Unit­ed States on mon­ey laun­der­ing and oth­er charges. Ram­lo­gan said he in­tend­ed to serve a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to Row­ley by next Wednes­day. "I do in­tend to sue Dr Row­ley for defama­tion where he al­leged there was some po­lit­i­cal con­spir­a­cy be­tween the judge who de­cid­ed the Gal­barans­ingh and Fer­gu­son case and the of­fice of the at­tor­ney gen­er­al.

"It is a scan­dalous, wicked al­le­ga­tion and it is one that has brought the of­fice of the at­tor­ney gen­er­al in­to grave dis­re­pute," Ram­lo­gan said. He was ad­dress­ing mem­bers of the me­dia af­ter a press brief­ing by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) at Queen's Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day. Say­ing an apol­o­gy from Row­ley was "long over­due" Ram­lo­gan added: "I have giv­en Dr Row­ley more than one op­por­tu­ni­ty to do so. "He seems to have a lot of idle time on his hands and he seems to have a very vivid imag­i­na­tion and he keeps in­vent­ing fic­ti­tious sto­ries about the at­tor­ney gen­er­al and puts them in the pub­lic do­main as if it's true."

When asked at a news con­fer­ence on Tues­day at his of­fice at Charles Street, Port-of-Spain, if the rul­ing was a de­feat for Ram­lo­gan, Row­ley replied: "I wouldn't term it a de­feat for the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al... if there is any de­feat it would be for jus­tice in Trinidad and To­ba­go." Row­ley al­so said it was the AG who "fa­cil­i­tat­ed the whole process, so hav­ing got the ex­pect­ed re­sult, I wouldn't call it a de­feat." Ram­lo­gan said it was his or­der to ex­tra­dite Gal­barans­ingh and Fer­gu­son. He added: "I could have cho­sen not to do so. The court has quashed that de­ci­sion. Ob­vi­ous­ly I may be dis­ap­point­ed by that but per­son­al dis­ap­point­ment and pro­fes­sion­al com­mit­ment to the Con­sti­tu­tion are two things that can­not ex­ist in the pub­lic do­main for politi­cians.

"Dr Row­ley was wrong and has been car­ry­ing on a long but not so proud but seem­ing­ly tra­di­tion of the PNM by at­tack­ing the ju­di­cia­ry when it suits them," Ram­lo­gan said. Row­ley al­so came in for heavy crit­i­cism from the ju­di­cia­ry which al­so ex­pressed "grave con­cern" over his com­ments and al­so ex­pressed its ab­hor­rence of the in­nu­en­does of col­lu­sion. Claim­ing Row­ley com­mit­ted a con­tempt of court Ram­lo­gan said he wrote to Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and the pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, Dana See­ta­hal, SC and the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion Roger Gas­pard.

He added: "I have called up­on them to take such ac­tion that they deem ap­pro­pri­ate and fit in their own wis­dom and judge­ment in the pub­lic in­ter­est and in the pro­tec­tion and de­fence of the in­de­pen­dence of the of­fice of both the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice, the judge con­cerned and the of­fice of the at­tor­ney gen­er­al." Ram­lo­gan al­so ac­cused Row­ley of at­tempt­ing to "outscore his arch ri­val Patrick Man­ning." He said: "Dr Row­ley has made a habit of tar­get­ing the at­tor­ney gen­er­al and ac­cus­ing him of all sorts of things un­der the sun. "It start­ed off by him ac­cus­ing me of vis­it­ing the New York mis­sion and mak­ing racist state­ments. I have nev­er been to New York in my per­son­al ca­pac­i­ty as at­tor­ney gen­er­al.

"He then went on to say I had giv­en 50 per cent of State briefs to my for­mer law firm. I am per­haps the on­ly at­tor­ney gen­er­al to have not giv­en a sin­gle brief from the State to his law firm," Ram­lo­gan main­tained. He said Row­ley al­so ac­cused him of abus­ing his po­si­tion as at­tor­ney gen­er­al by re­quest­ing in­for­ma­tion from the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU). "Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth. I have nev­er re­quest­ed any bank­ing in­for­ma­tion from any cit­i­zen from the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit and I don't know why he makes such spu­ri­ous, wild, base­less, ma­li­cious al­le­ga­tions against the at­tor­ney gen­er­al.

"The on­ly con­clu­sion I came to is that I think these civ­il fraud cas­es that are filed against top of­fi­cials in the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion has dri­ven such ter­ror and fear in the heart of the PNM that the on­ly thing the could come up with is to at­tack the at­tor­ney gen­er­al and paint him as if he is some kind of sin­is­ter, omi­nous fel­la," Ram­lo­gan added. He main­tained he would not al­low Row­ley or any­one else to dri­ve him away from the pur­suit of jus­tice. Say­ing it was not "PNM coun­try or UNC coun­try or COP coun­try" Ram­lo­gan urged greater re­spect for the Con­sti­tu­tion, adding that no one was above the law.