Richard Lord

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day is­sued an un­re­served apol­o­gy to Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh and the Ju­di­cia­ry for any mis­un­der­stand­ing or per­ceived in­jury caused by com­ments made about the quash­ing of the ex­tra­di­tion or­der for busi­ness­men Steve Fer­gu­son and Ish Gal­barans­ingh. Row­ley held a news con­fer­ence at his of­fice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day to clar­i­fy the state­ment, which sparked se­vere crit­i­cism from the Ju­di­cia­ry and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan. Row­ley said his com­ments on the mat­ter were di­rect­ed at Ram­lo­gan. "Noth­ing that I said was aimed at or in­tend­ed to be di­rect­ed at the learned Judge Boodoos­ingh or the Ju­di­cia­ry," Row­ley told re­porters at the news con­fer­ence.

"I am deeply dis­tressed and sad­dened by this de­vel­op­ment and apol­o­gise un­re­served­ly to the judge and the en­tire Ju­di­cia­ry, a body for which I have the high­est re­gard and in which I place the deep­est trust in its com­pe­tence and in­de­pen­dence," he added. Row­ley said T&T was very for­tu­nate to have "a fierce­ly in­de­pen­dent and a high­ly com­pe­tent Ju­di­cia­ry, which is pre­pared to stand as a bul­wark be­tween the peo­ple and the ex­cess of a ram­pant Gov­ern­ment." Row­ley in­sist­ed that based on his tone, tenor and con­tent of his re­spons­es dur­ing Tues­day's news con­fer­ence, he was "not at­tack­ing the work of Jus­tice Boodoos­ingh or al­lud­ing to any con­spir­a­cy on his part."

He said his com­ments on the mat­ter were di­rect­ed en­tire­ly to the ac­tions of the cur­rent At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Trinidad and To­ba­go, who was un­der an oblig­a­tion by law:

1) To have act­ed ra­tio­nal­ly in his de­ci­sion-mak­ing in this mat­ter by stat­ing all rea­sons for agree­ing to ex­tra­dite Gal­barans­ingh and Fer­gu­son;

2) to act with­out any fet­ter of de­ci­sion or ac­tion of any pre­vi­ous At­tor­ney Gen­er­al or Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions;

3) to act with­out any ac­tu­al or per­ceived bias; and

4) to clear­ly demon­strate the rea­sons why he re­fused to ac­cept Gal­barans­ingh and Fer­gu­son's ex­pla­na­tions that the pre­ferred fo­rum to be tried was in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Row­ley said Jus­tice Boodoos­ingh "ex­cel­lent­ly writ­ten and rea­soned judg­ment in this mat­ter clear­ly iden­ti­fied the very ma­te­r­i­al short­com­ings of this At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, which he ul­ti­mate­ly viewed to be so se­ri­ous as to quash the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's de­ci­sion as to ex­tra­di­tion with­out invit­ing him to re­con­sid­er same." He said it was in­ter­est­ing to note that the judge in his rul­ing re­lied on a de­ci­sion by the Privy Coun­cil in a mat­ter be­tween Fer­oza Ramjohn vs Patrick Man­ning in which Ram­lo­gan was in­volved. Row­ley said that case set out clear­ly the re­quire­ments for giv­ing full rea­sons. On com­ments about the "time­ly" con­nec­tion be­tween the judg­ment and the lift­ing of the cur­few, which were an­nounced on the same day, Row­ley said he was re­fer­ring to "the op­por­tunis­tic ac­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter, a po­lit­i­cal ac­tion on her part, which could have been ex­e­cut­ed to take ad­van­tage of the ef­fect of the judg­ment."

He in­sist­ed: "This com­ment had ab­solute­ly noth­ing to do with the ac­tion of the judge or the tim­ing of the judg­ment." Row­ley said he "ful­ly un­der­stands the ex­ces­sive ful­mi­na­tion's of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, since all my re­spons­es were di­rect­ed at his stew­ard­ship of the ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings against the back­ground of the undis­put­ed fact that the two claimants are ma­jor par­ty fi­nanciers of the AG's par­ty."