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Thursday, July 10, 2025

AG Ramlogan not moving

...says he's not go­ing to Lon­don or even step­ping aside

by

20140510

Amid heat­ed calls for the re­moval of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la-Per­sad-Bisses­sar is deny­ing any move to axe the AG.Pres­sure has been mount­ing steadi­ly with­in the coali­tion gov­ern­ment since the prison lit­i­ga­tion is­sue be­came pub­lic.The PM broke her si­lence last night fol­low­ing claims from par­ty in­sid­ers that the AG was be­ing of­fered the va­cant post of Am­bas­sador to Lon­don.

The Sun­day Guardian was told that the Lon­don post­ing is now avail­able as Garvin Nicholas' term re­cent­ly came to an end. Nicholas is back in T&T and has al­ready as­sumed his new du­ties.In­sid­ers at Ram­lo­gan's min­istry said he told sev­er­al of them and some Cab­i­net col­leagues that his res­ig­na­tion was al­ready in his back pock­et and he was not afraid to pull it out.

The call for a crim­i­nal probe in­to the prison lit­i­ga­tion is­sue, as or­dered by Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard on Wednes­day, has placed the AG's of­fice un­der fur­ther pub­lic scruti­ny and has in­ten­si­fied the need for ac­tion from the Prime Min­is­ter.Sev­er­al calls were made and a text was sent to the Prime Min­is­ter dur­ing the day yes­ter­day.

The text to the PM at 2:38 pm stat­ed: "Madam Prime Min­is­ter, Renu­ka Singh @ Guardian. We got word that Anand Ram­lo­gan is go­ing to be re­as­signed as Am­bas­sador to Lon­don. I was al­so in­formed that he has re­fused that of­fer but has been say­ing that he has his res­ig­na­tion in his back pock­et. Is there any truth to any of this?"The PM re­spond­ed at 8:17: "No. Truth"

Since the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al's let­ter to PM Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar high­light­ing the abuse of the prison lit­i­ga­tion cas­es be­came pub­lic, there has been in­creas­ing calls for Ram­lo­gan to step aside or be fired. To date there has been no con­fir­ma­tion as to whether the crim­i­nal probe has in fact be­gun, this de­spite the fact that Gas­pard called for it to be­gin "im­me­di­ate­ly."Sev­er­al at­tempts to reach act­ing CoP Stephen Williams yes­ter­day on that probe was un­suc­cess­ful.

Anand: It's po­lit­i­cal mis­chief of the high­est or­der

Ram­lo­gan yes­ter­day dis­missed the in­for­ma­tion as "po­lit­i­cal mis­chief."In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, he said he was not about to demit of­fice, move to Lon­don, or even step aside in light of the crim­i­nal probe in­to the prison lit­i­ga­tion is­sue."I want to make it abun­dant­ly clear that this is po­lit­i­cal mis­chief of the high­est or­der," Ram­lo­gan said.He said this spread­ing of in­for­ma­tion reeked of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

"The PNM's strat­e­gy is clear; They man­u­fac­ture and fab­ri­cate al­le­ga­tions and ac­cu­sa­tions, then call for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, and then call for your re­moval be­cause you are be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed," he said."I want to make it clear that no al­le­ga­tions have been made against me, and the PNM strat­e­gy to make al­le­ga­tions and then call for peo­ple's re­moval is as old as time and will not work."

Ram­lo­gan said "(PNM leader Dr Kei­th) Row­ley did not ap­ply that prin­ci­ple when he was un­der probe for the Lan­date is­sue." Ram­lo­gan said the Lan­date mat­ter was still be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed and on that ba­sis, Row­ley, too, should step aside for the du­ra­tion of that probe."They are con­fus­ing me with John Je­re­mie or Glen­da More­an," he said, re­fer­ring to the two for­mer PNM AGs who were re­moved from of­fice and giv­en am­bas­sador­ships by then Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning.

More­an, AG from 2001 to 2003, was ap­point­ed High Com­mis­sion­er to the UK in 2003. John Je­re­mie re­placed her as AG in 2003. In April 2008, she was re­moved from Lon­don (and sent to Wash­ing­ton as am­bas­sador to the US) to make way for Je­re­mie, who was post­ed to Lon­don as an am­bas­sador by Man­ning. Je­re­mie was re­placed by Brigid An­nisette-George.

Not the first call to re­move Anand

Ram­lo­gan has faced sev­er­al calls for his re­moval since he be­came AG.

�2He has been the cen­tral fig­ure trig­ger­ing at least one mas­sive pub­lic march in 2012 in re­la­tion to Sec­tion 34.

�2 A call for his dis­missal even came from with­in the coali­tion back in Oc­to­ber, when the Con­gress of the Peo­ple met with the Prime Min­is­ter to en­cour­age his re­moval.

�2Ram­lo­gan faced a sim­i­lar call over last year's email­gate scan­dal, which al­so al­leged wrong­do­ing on the part of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la and oth­er Cab­i­net min­is­ters.

�2In this lat­est is­sue, calls for his re­moval has come from the Op­po­si­tion, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, for­mer al­ly turned In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP) leader Jack Warn­er, the uni­fied Joint Trade Union Move­ment, and Kirk Wait­he of Fix­in' T&T.


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