Geisha Kow­lessar

In the face of mount­ing pub­lic pres­sure, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has or­dered At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan to re­vis­it al­le­ga­tions of col­lu­sion in­volv­ing lawyers en­gaged in prison lit­i­ga­tion.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the de­ci­sion yes­ter­day, call­ing on Ram­lo­gan to meet with act­ing So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al Car­ol Her­nan­dez, Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Con­rad Bar­row, In­spec­tor of Pris­ons Daniel Khan, Min­is­ter of Jus­tice Em­manuel George and the Chief State So­lic­i­tor Christophe Grant to re­vis­it the mat­ter and to chart the best way for­ward.

Her state­ment came even as the Law As­so­ci­a­tion and As­so­ci­a­tion of Law Of­fi­cers added its voice to the list of those call­ing for an in­de­pen­dent probe in­to al­le­ga­tions made by for­mer so­lic­i­tor gen­er­al Eleanor Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well, who ex­pressed con­cern about what she called an "un­eth­i­cal busi­ness" ven­ture in prison lit­i­ga­tion mat­ters.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar's de­ci­sion al­so came in the face of an ul­ti­ma­tum from Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley that she call a probe and or­der Ram­lo­gan to step aside, or else he would launch pub­lic protests sim­i­lar to that in the Sec­tion 34 mat­ter.In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the PM said the de­ci­sion to re­vis­it the mat­ter had come af­ter Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well re­it­er­at­ed her call for a probe in the mat­ter to con­tin­ue and the Prison Of­fi­cers' As­so­ci­a­tion al­so called for the same.

Not­ed re­cent is­sues

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was un­der the im­pres­sion that when she (PM) dealt with the mat­ter af­ter it first raised in a let­ter last Au­gust by Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well, that the for­mer so­lic­i­tor gen­er­al had ex­pressed ap­proval with how it was han­dled.

The PM said that was the im­pres­sion she had when Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well sub­se­quent­ly penned a sec­ond let­ter which stat­ed: "Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter, your proac­tive at­ten­tion to this mat­ter is great­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed as it un­der­scores your recog­ni­tion of the in­ter­ests of those en­gaged in civ­il lit­i­ga­tion on be­half of the State and their clients in the Prison Ser­vice.

"In light of the dis­cus­sions with the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, through your in­ter­ven­tion, I am now con­fi­dent that the is­sues raised in my let­ter will be ad­e­quate­ly ad­dressed and ac­cord­ing­ly would no longer seek fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion through your of­fice."The PM said: "As for the ob­jec­tions car­ried in the me­dia about my own han­dling of the par­tic­u­lar re­port, giv­en that the for­mer so­lic­i­tor gen­er­al is of the view that the mat­ter had been ap­pro­pri­ate­ly han­dled by me, who else could or should ques­tion her pro­fes­sion­al as­sess­ment?

"In my re­spect­ful view, the is­sue was treat­ed with the ur­gency and se­ri­ous­ness re­quired and the for­mer so­lic­i­tor gen­er­al's ex­pressed opin­ion val­i­dates my ac­tions in this re­gard."Notwith­stand­ing that, the PM said she had not­ed Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well's state­ment this week that she ex­pect­ed the probe to con­tin­ue and the POA's calls for it to be probed fur­ther and had ad­vised the AG to meet with the key stake­hold­ers to chart a way for­ward.