Derek Achong

Fol­low­ing a four-hour marathon meet­ing on Fri­day evening which saw mem­bers of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion Coun­cil of­fer­ing their res­ig­na­tion, pres­i­dent Dana See­ta­hal, SC, yes­ter­day re­signed. The T&T Guardian was re­li­ably in­formed See­ta­hal, who has held the post for over a year, ten­dered her res­ig­na­tion through an e-mail to the mem­bers of the in­cum­bent 17-mem­ber coun­cil yes­ter­day. Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter the meet­ing at the Hall of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain, on Fri­day, se­nior or­di­nary mem­ber Dou­glas Mendes, SC, who spoke on be­half of the as­so­ci­a­tion, said all the mem­bers of the coun­cil had of­fered their res­ig­na­tions to the mem­ber­ship. The emer­gency meet­ing was called in re­sponse to the dis­ap­pear­ance of $284,000 from the as­so­ci­a­tion's ac­counts.

At the meet­ing on Fri­day, mem­bers of the as­so­ci­a­tion agreed to re­port the fi­nan­cial ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty to the Fraud Squad, which is ex­pect­ed to launch a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion. De­spite their of­fer to re­sign, the mem­ber­ship vot­ed to have the coun­cil mem­bers keep their posts un­til the as­so­ci­a­tion's an­nu­al elec­tions, due this month. Af­ter the meet­ing, See­ta­hal with­drew her nom­i­na­tion for re-elec­tion as pres­i­dent. Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan, See­ta­hal's on­ly com­peti­tor in the elec­tion, al­so with­drew his nom­i­na­tion at the meet­ing. When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Khan said he was yet to de­cide whether to re-en­ter his nom­i­na­tion for the post.

Khan sug­gest­ed Queen's Coun­sel Karl Hud­son-Phillips should of­fer him­self for the part-time post. In a press re­lease yes­ter­day, four ju­nior or­di­nary mem­bers-Daniel Khan, There­sa Hadad-Maraj, Shankar Bidaisee and Sophia Vailoo - crit­i­cised See­ta­hal and trea­sur­er Kem­ra­jh Har­rikissoon for not re­sign­ing in a time­ly man­ner. "Notwith­stand­ing the fact that the ju­nior or­di­nary mem­bers, at no time, were sin­gled out as be­ing re­spon­si­ble, pur­suant to the guid­ance and ad­vice of Hud­son-Phillips, they thought it fit and prop­er to nev­er­the­less do the ho­n­ourable thing and re­sign," the re­lease said. The elec­tions, which were ini­tial­ly sched­uled for March 16, were post­poned af­ter the as­so­ci­a­tion brought a statu­to­ry in­ter­pre­ta­tion suit ear­li­er this year ask­ing the High Court to de­ter­mine whether state at­tor­neys could vote and par­tic­i­pate in the elec­tions. On March 26, Jus­tice Mau­reen Ra­j­nauth-Lee ruled that un­der the Le­gal Pro­fes­sion Act, state at­tor­neys or law of­fi­cers could not par­tic­i­pate. Al­most 300 law of­fi­cers ap­pealed the de­ci­sion. The ap­peal judg­ment is ex­pect­ed to be de­liv­ered lat­er this month.