Derek Achong

A pe­ti­tion call­ing for the re­moval of Law As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, and vice-pres­i­dent Ger­ry Brooks failed to get off the ground yes­ter­day af­ter al­most half of the at­tor­neys who ini­tial­ly sup­port­ed it with­drew their sup­port.

Speak­ing with me­dia per­son­nel out­side the Hall of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain, min­utes af­ter the as­so­ci­a­tion's spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing to de­cide on the pe­ti­tion fin­ished, Ar­mour ex­plained that a dozen of the 30 sig­na­to­ries at­tend­ed the meet­ing and in­di­cat­ed that they had been duped in­to lend­ing their sup­port.

In the pe­ti­tion, the at­tor­neys who draft­ed it claimed both Ar­mour and Brooks were po­lit­i­cal­ly bi­ased based on their al­leged fail­ure to speak on sev­er­al re­cent leg­isla­tive mea­sures tak­en by Gov­ern­ment.

Stat­ing the sig­na­tures of 25 fi­nan­cial mem­bers were re­quired to call a meet­ing of the as­so­ci­a­tion, Ar­mour said the fresh claims by the dis­sent­ing sig­na­to­ries led to a vote be­ing tak­en on whether the meet­ing should be can­celled.

"Mem­bers, who were very irate, de­clared they had been mis­led and brought here un­der false pre­tences and they vot­ed by ma­jor­i­ty that the meet­ing should be de­clared in­valid and ir­reg­u­lar be­cause it had been called by a few mis­guid­ed peo­ple," Ar­mour said.

"It is an un­for­tu­nate de­scent by our pro­fes­sion in­to an un­de­sir­able prac­tice by mis­guid­ed peo­ple who are seek­ing to pro­mote their own in­di­vid­ual agen­das.

"It is un­der­min­ing and bring the le­gal pro­fes­sion­al in­to dis­re­pute and I am very hap­py that to­day a large as­sem­bly of right=think­ing ra­tio­nal lawyers re­ject­ed this at­tempt to have the le­gal pro­fes­sion de­gen­er­ate in­to base par­ti­zan po­lit­i­cal non­sense," he added.

Ar­mour said the as­so­ci­a­tion's Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee would now have to con­sid­er what ac­tion, if any, should be tak­en against the mem­bers who re­cant­ed on their sup­port and those who elicit­ed it.

"It is some­thing we have to look at. We have to ap­proach it cau­tious­ly be­cause it is young peo­ple who were mis­led. It was very trag­ic," he said.

Brooks al­so thanked the al­most 300 mem­bers present for their sup­port at the meet­ing, which he said showed the as­so­ci­a­tion's mem­ber­ship con­tin­ued to have con­fi­dence in its ex­ec­u­tive.

"We shall con­tin­ue to work for the ben­e­fit of the pro­fes­sion and T&T," Brooks said, as he not­ed he and oth­er ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers were un­fazed by the failed at­tempt against their lead­er­ship.

Ar­mour had pre­vi­ous­ly act­ed as the at­tor­ney for Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley when he was the leader of the Op­po­si­tion. Brooks is cur­rent­ly the chair­man of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC).

Sturge claims vic­to­ry

In a brief in­ter­view af­ter the meet­ing, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Sen­a­tor Wayne Sturge, one of the sig­na­to­ries who main­tained his sup­port for the mo­tion, said de­spite the out­come of the meet­ing the pe­ti­tion­ers had achieved what they had set out to do when they draft­ed the mo­tion.

"We won be­fore it start­ed," Sturge said.

He claimed that Ar­mour and Brooks had been "em­bar­rassed in­to ac­tion," as since the pe­ti­tion was raised they had be­gan to com­ment on top­i­cal is­sues af­fect­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion, most re­cent­ly last week­end when Ar­mour dis­missed claims by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi that some 1,300 pris­on­ers may be in line to be re­leased from prison when the Bail (Amend­ment) Bill elapsed at the end of next month.

"Be­fore this mo­tion they were silent on is­sues which favoured the Gov­ern­ment. The minute the pe­ti­tion came in­to ex­is­tence they start­ed to speak about the Bail (Am­mend­ment) Bill," Sturge said.

He al­so de­scribed the lawyers who with­drew their sup­port as "spine­less."

"They should not have ho­n­our of call­ing them­selves lawyers. I can't un­der­stand how a lawyer can say I signed a doc­u­ment with­out read­ing it and then ad­vise their clients not to do so. Lawyers are not sup­posed to be sheep but li­ons and I don't know how they could stand up and rep­re­sent any­one when you are so spine­less," Sturge said.

He main­tained that the pe­ti­tion was nec­es­sary in or­der to en­sure that the as­so­ci­a­tion was free from po­lit­i­cal bias.

"We are all po­lit­i­cal an­i­mals but we should not al­low pol­i­tics to in­flu­ence our de­ci­sions and ac­tions," he said.

In ad­di­tion to Sturge, the T&T Guardian un­der­stands that the pe­ti­tion was al­so signed by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, UNC Sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen and for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Collin Par­tap.