Mar­tin Daly, SC, said yes­ter­day it was dif­fi­cult to see how le­git­i­mate com­plaints about the de­lay in the de­liv­ery of judg­ments could be termed a plot.The T&T Guardian asked him to com­ment on the claim re­port­ed­ly made by Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie that there is a plot to hound him out of of­fice be­cause of the de­lay in the de­liv­ery of judg­ments, among oth­er things."Much of the cur­rent ag­i­ta­tion was pro­voked by the Ram­nar­ine case de­cid­ed in the Privy Coun­cil on Ju­ly 31 this year," Daly said.

"As I wrote in my week­ly col­umn, in the Ram­nar­ine case the Privy Coun­cil re­ferred to the de­lay in that par­tic­u­lar mat­ri­mo­ni­al (mat­ter) as 'an af­front to fam­i­ly jus­tice.'"I have been try­ing to find out whether there are any more sim­i­lar af­fronts to jus­tice that we don't know about. I have been ag­i­tat­ing that since Au­gust."

The al­le­ga­tion of a plot arose from a num­ber of news­pa­per sto­ries high­light­ing the de­lay by Archie and the Court of Ap­peal in the de­liv­ery of par­tic­u­lar judg­ments, the ju­di­cia­ry's fail­ure to speed up civ­il lit­i­ga­tion ini­ti­at­ed by the Gov­ern­ment against for­mer pub­lic of­fi­cials, and Archie's over­seas trav­el.Asked what might be caus­ing the de­lay in the de­liv­ery of cer­tain judg­ments, Daly replied, "I don't know, but it is not ac­cept­able."

He said he had al­so sug­gest­ed a state­ment on the is­sue should have been made at the open­ing of the law term in Sep­tem­ber.For­mer CJ and for­mer pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice, Michael de la Bastide, said his im­pres­sion, based on the speech­es of Archie, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was that there was a good re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Ex­ec­u­tive and the CJ.

"But, again, this is sim­ply on the ba­sis of pub­lished state­ments. I am not privy to what may have been go­ing on be­hind closed doors," he added.He stressed that it was "dan­ger­ous" to com­ment with­out know­ing cer­tain facts, and whether the CJ did say what he was re­port­ed to have said."It was said to come from ju­di­cial sources. I sim­ply don't know whether it was an ac­cu­rate re­port or not," he cau­tioned. "I don't know if there is a con­spir­a­cy and who are the con­spir­a­tors."

De la Bastide said if, in­deed, Archie did say there was an or­ches­trat­ed plot to re­move him from of­fice, know­ing him, it was not some­thing he would have said light­ly, and if there were a con­spir­a­cy and it was po­lit­i­cal­ly gen­er­at­ed, it would be a very se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tion.He re­marked it did seem odd that, all of a sud­den, a num­ber of mat­ters were be­ing ven­ti­lat­ed through the me­dia which tend­ed to re­flect bad­ly on the CJ.

"I think one is en­ti­tled to won­der if it was pure co­in­ci­dence, or it was be­ing drawn to­geth­er by a per­son or per­sons un­known as a con­cert­ed at­tack on the CJ."But I have no re­li­able in­for­ma­tion on what he said and if he did say some­thing, if there was ba­sis for such a sit­u­a­tion."

De­layed jus­tice main is­sue

For­mer chief jus­tice Sat Shar­ma, whom the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion sought to re­move from of­fice, said he could not see a plot to re­move Archie.In 2005, Man­ning ad­vised Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards to set up a tri­bunal to in­ves­ti­gate whether Shar­ma should be re­moved from of­fice. This came af­ter it was al­leged Shar­ma had tried to ex­ert pres­sure on then di­rec­tor of pub­lic pros­e­cu­tions Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son and at­tor­ney gen­er­al John Je­re­mie to drop a mur­der charge against Prof Vi­jay Narayns­ingh.

Ques­tioned on a pos­si­ble plot against Archie, Shar­ma said: "Where is the plot com­ing from? The meat of the mat­ter is judg­ments de­layed."Asked to com­ment on the de­layed judg­ments, he said, "It's a long sto­ry."Shar­ma said he had com­ment­ed enough and did not wish to com­ment fur­ther.

Pre­vi­ous ten­sions

When Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj was At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in 1999, there was a good deal of ten­sion be­tween him and then Chief Jus­tice Michael de la Bastide, the lat­ter re­called yes­ter­day. Iron­i­cal­ly, Ma­haraj is one of the peo­ple point­ing fin­gers at the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive as be­ing be­hind an al­leged con­spir­a­cy to re­move Archie from of­fice.Ten­sion be­tween the two arms of gov­ern­ment, the ex­ec­u­tive and the ju­di­cia­ry, is not un­known, de la Bastide said.

Not­ing he did not want to re­open old wounds, he nev­er­the­less re­called the past stand-offs be­tween him­self and Ma­haraj."When I was chief jus­tice, there were times when there was a good deal of ten­sion be­tween my­self and the gov­ern­ment, in par­tic­u­lar the then at­tor­ney gen­er­al, Ramesh Ma­haraj," he said.De la Bastide said it was "a prob­a­ble at­tempt to in­ter­fere in the man­age­ment and ad­min­is­tra­tion of the ju­di­cia­ry and bring the ju­di­cia­ry un­der the su­per­vi­sion and con­trol of the at­tor­ney gen­er­al."

In a speech at the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of the law term in 1999, de la Bastide pub­licly ac­cused the Bas­deo Pan­day ad­min­is­tra­tion of try­ing to in­ter­fere with the in­de­pen­dence of the ju­di­cia­ry, say­ing "pow­er­ful forces" were try­ing to run him out of of­fice.Ma­haraj at the time was in­sist­ing that he was re­spon­si­ble for the ju­di­cia­ry and re­fused to be a mere "con­duit" be­tween Cab­i­net and the ju­di­cia­ry. De la Bastide, how­ev­er, held that giv­ing the AG such pow­er would erode the in­de­pen­dence of the ju­di­cia­ry and the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers.

–With re­port­ing by Yvonne Ba­boolal