Derek Achong

A day af­ter Jus­tice Vasheist Kokaram warned the me­dia and sus­pend­ed In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion deputy chair­man Gladys Gafoor to ex­er­cise re­strain in com­ment­ing on her on­go­ing le­gal ac­tion, her at­tor­ney yes­ter­day failed in an at­tempt to cen­sure At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan. The is­sue of Ram­lo­gan's com­ments were raised by Gafoor's at­tor­ney, Clive Phelps, at the be­gin­ning of yes­ter­day's hear­ing in the mat­ter. As Phelps raised the is­sue, he pre­sent­ed Kokaram with a copy of an ar­ti­cle from a dai­ly news­pa­per yes­ter­day (not the Guardian). The head­line was ti­tled ti­tled: AG sets the record straight on im­passe. Phelps said: "The at­tor­ney gen­er­al is not above the law. He may need a gen­tle prod­ding or re­minder." Phelps claimed that in the ar­ti­cle Ram­lo­gan com­ment­ed on Gafoor's on­go­ing le­gal bat­tle against her sus­pen­sion, con­trary to a warn­ing is­sued by Kokaram on Wednes­day.

Af­ter read­ing the ar­ti­cle, Kokaram dis­missed Phelps' claims, not­ing that in the ar­ti­cle Ram­lo­gan said he could not com­ment fur­ther on the is­sue as it was be­fore the courts. In his oral rul­ing on Wednes­day, Kokaram said: "As an ex­pe­ri­enced ju­di­cial of­fi­cer, the lit­i­gant (Gafoor) above all oth­ers should have ex­er­cised re­straint in com­ment­ing on the mat­ter." Kokaram not­ed that at a pre­vi­ous hear­ing of the mat­ter this month, he raised the con­fi­den­tial­ly re­stric­tion on the mat­ter, al­low­ing me­dia re­port­ing be­cause of the pub­lic in­ter­est and im­por­tance of the mat­ter. Kokaram ap­pealed to re­porters present to ex­er­cise re­straint when re­port­ing on the is­sues and to prac­tise re­spon­si­ble jour­nal­ism. "I hope to not see a re­peat of this again," Kokaram warned. Dur­ing yes­ter­day's af­ter­noon hear­ing, at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the com­mis­sion and Gafoor made rep­re­sen­ta­tion in an ap­pli­ca­tion which sought to strike out cer­tain parts of Gafoor's ev­i­dence in the case. The ap­pli­ca­tion was brought by the com­mis­sion's at­tor­ney, Se­nior Coun­sel Deb­o­rah Peake, who de­scribed parts of Gafoor's af­fi­davits in the mat­ter as "ir­rel­e­vant and scan­dalous." Through her ju­di­cial re­view ap­pli­ca­tion, Gafoor is seek­ing to have a de­ci­sion by her fel­low mem­bers of the com­mis­sion, forc­ing her to re­cuse her­self from an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, quashed.

On De­cem­ber 19, last year, she was forced to re­cuse her­self from a mat­ter in­volv­ing for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie.

He had writ­ten to the com­mis­sion ask­ing for Gafoor and an­oth­er com­mis­sion­er-char­tered ac­coun­tant Se­u­nar­ine Jokhoo-to be re­moved from all con­sid­er­a­tion of his mat­ter, her ap­pli­ca­tion stat­ed. Par­al­lel to her re­view ap­pli­ca­tion is a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion chal­leng­ing the de­ci­sion of Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards to sus­pend her and ap­point a spe­cial tri­bunal to hear al­le­ga­tions lev­eled against her by fel­low mem­bers of the com­mis­sion. The oth­er mem­bers of the com­mis­sion are Ken Gor­don (chair­man), Pro­fes­sor Ann-Marie Bisses­sar and Neil Rol­ing­son. Gafoor was sus­pend­ed ear­li­er this year af­ter Richards re­ceived three "se­cret let­ters" from mem­bers of the com­mis­sion com­plain­ing about Gafoor's be­hav­iour. Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case be­fore the ap­point­ment of the tri­bunal, Richards met with Gafoor to dis­cuss the al­le­ga­tions. The mem­bers of the tri­bunal are for­mer Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) pres­i­dent Michael de la Bastide (chair­man), Jus­tice of Ap­peal Humphrey Stollmey­er and High Court judge Mau­reen Ra­j­nauth-Lee. The mat­ter was ad­journed to next Wednes­day when Kokaram will rule on the com­mis­sion's ap­pli­ca­tion.