JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, July 12, 2025

Anand slams detractors

by

20151130

The Op­po­si­tion UNC's le­gal team has hailed yes­ter­day's Court of Ap­peal rul­ing as a vic­to­ry and slammed de­trac­tors who had said the UNC's elec­tion pe­ti­tion had been des­tined to fail.

"(In­stead) The rule of law, democ­ra­cy and the Con­sti­tu­tion have tri­umphed to­day," said team leader, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan. "The judg­ments were il­lu­mi­nat­ing, pow­er­ful and very in­ci­sive from all three judges... we have won a sig­nif­i­cant vic­to­ry for democ­ra­cy. It has put lie to those who cried us down and those who said it was doomed to fail­ure," he added.

Ram­lo­gan, backed by mem­bers of his le­gal team, in­clud­ing Ger­ald Ramdeen and Dar­ryl Heer­alal, spoke to re­porters at the Hall of Jus­tice soon af­ter the rul­ing. EBC chair­man Dr Nor­bert Mas­son, who at­tend­ed yes­ter­day's court ses­sion, de­clined com­ment, silent­ly walk­ing past re­porters out­side the court

UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar called it a vic­to­ry as well as a land­mark judg­ment. Ram­lo­gan, said of the rul­ing: "This case rais­es nov­el, com­plex, very im­por­tant ques­tions for a young democ­ra­cy and it's good it will pro­ceed to tri­al. Re­gard­less of the out­come, the pub­lic will ben­e­fit from the guid­ance the courts will pro­vide."

Slam­ming de­trac­tors of UNC's pe­ti­tion, he not­ed in the lead-up to the ap­peals and in the ap­peal, "the kind of neg­a­tive cov­er­age, crit­i­cism and some­time abuse which were heard" by those in the UNC who had "dared sim­ply to ex­er­cise their con­sti­tu­tion­al de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right to lay be­fore the court a le­gal chal­lenge to the re­sults.

"We took a lot of licks from our col­leagues on the op­po­site side, the me­dia. The UNC leader, Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar her­self, took quite a beat­ing for pur­su­ing these elec­tion pe­ti­tions and she was at pains to point out it was about the rule of law and the breach­es, not just to the rule of law but to the spir­it of the law." Com­ment­ing on the Chief Jus­tice's lone dis­sent­ing voice, Ram­lo­gan said: "It's not of­ten there is a dis­sent­ing judg­ment from the Ho­n­ourable Chief Jus­tice but it au­gurs well for the strength, in­de­pen­dence and fair­ness of the Ju­di­cia­ry sys­tem."

He not­ed there were oth­er mat­ters which had arisen con­cern­ing the elec­tion and EBC where two peo­ple in To­ba­go had filed con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tions claim­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion as the vot­ing time had been ex­tend­ed in Trinidad on­ly and not To­ba­go. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said yes­ter­day's judg­ment was a vin­di­ca­tion of her de­ci­sion to sup­port pub­licly the UNC elec­tion pe­ti­tions in the pub­lic in­ter­est .

In a press re­lease on the rul­ing, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the UNC wel­comed the his­toric, land­mark rul­ing It added: "This is a vic­to­ry for democ­ra­cy and the peo­ple of T&T who are en­ti­tled to a sys­tem of elec­tions that is free, fair and in ac­cor­dance with the Con­sti­tu­tion. "The over­rid­ing ob­jec­tive is to pro­tect the cher­ished prin­ci­ples of our democ­ra­cy en­shrined in the Con­sti­tu­tion ... no man or en­ti­ty is above the law, hence the EBC is it­self sub­ject to the Con­sti­tu­tion from which it de­rives its pow­ers.

"We main­tain there is a strong case that the de­ci­sion to ex­tend the time for vot­ing by one hour was il­le­gal and un­fair. It put the UNC elec­tion ma­chin­ery and sup­port­ers at a great dis­ad­van­tage and con­tra­vened both the spir­it and let­ter of the law." She said, for in­stance, it was very strange the EBC didn't sim­i­lar­ly ex­tend the time for vot­ing in To­ba­go.

The re­lease added: "The (court) vic­to­ry paves the way for a full-scale tri­al of (all) these elec­tion pe­ti­tions. Or­di­nary cit­i­zens from all walks of life who were af­fect­ed by the de­ci­sion or who may be in pos­ses­sion of rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion can now come for­ward and let their voic­es be heard. "Many ag­griev­ed cit­i­zens who were turned away at the polls when they went to cast their vote af­ter 6 pm will no doubt let their voic­es be heard. "The chaos and con­fu­sion that fol­lowed the sud­den de­ci­sion by the EBC to ex­tend the vot­ing time will now be the sub­ject of ju­di­cial scruti­ny. "Con­flict­ing in­for­ma­tion and opin­ions saw many polling sta­tions re­main­ing closed whilst oth­ers al­lowed peo­ple to vote in the midst of the pre­vail­ing un­cer­tain­ty as to what the true, cor­rect po­si­tion was."


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored