Port-of-Spain South MP Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald re­mained un­der po­lice guard on Tues­day at the St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre for a sec­ond day as she was un­able to post her $2 mil­lion bail bond on sev­en crim­i­nal charges.

Her at­tor­ney, Pamela El­der SC, de­scribed as “slow, te­dious and an­ti­quat­ed.”

Mc­Don­ald’s com­plained of feel­ing un­well on Mon­day hours af­ter be­ing charged with cor­rup­tion-re­lat­ed of­fences and did not ap­pear in court along­side her com­pan­ion and three oth­er men charged with sim­i­lar of­fences.

Mc­Don­ald was fired for a third time as a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter af­ter she was charged and sacked of her po­si­tion as deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM yes­ter­day.

El­der in a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia re­fused to dis­close de­tails of Mc­Don­ald’s health con­di­tion or when she would be dis­charged from hos­pi­tal

“I am not com­ment­ing on Ms Mc­Don­ald’s health at all.”

Hav­ing vis­it­ed Mc­Don­ald for a few min­utes at the pri­vate hos­pi­tal where she con­tin­ues to be un­der po­lice cus­tody, El­der said “We are look­ing at the le­gal is­sues and that is the bail is­sue. It is be­ing processed. That is as far as I know. It is a slow, te­dious and an­ti­quat­ed sys­tem we have for pro­cess­ing bail.”

This sys­tem, El­der said our “leg­is­la­ture” needs to look at.

The de­lay in ob­tain­ing bail her for the 61-year-old client has no way, frus­trat­ed El­der.

“I am an ex­pe­ri­enced crim­i­nal at­tor­ney. I know all the prob­lems in the sys­tem.”

How­ev­er, El­der said the slow process was caus­ing Mc­Don­ald un­due stress.

“Any­one who is in po­lice cus­tody it is a stress­ful sit­u­a­tion.”

In the six days Mc­Don­ald has been de­tained, El­der said her client did all that was re­quired of her.

“She has been in­ter­viewed, charged and hos­pi­talised so things are tak­ing place.”

On Mon­day, El­der had com­plained that Mc­Don­ald’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to rea­son­able bail and to be brought be­fore a ju­di­cial of­fi­cer af­ter be­ing charged were de­nied.

Asked if she in­tends to pen a let­ter to Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie on these she high­light­ed, El­der an­swered “the CJ should be aware of it. He should have con­struc­tive knowl­edge of it. This was the func­tion of the leg­is­la­ture.”

She said it makes no sense grant­i­ng a per­son bail “and he or she has to go through a very lengthy pro­ce­dure. It is a mock­ery of the sys­tem. You are en­ti­tled to rea­son­able bail. You get bail and then you have this in­or­di­nate time for it to take place.”

El­der who al­so rep­re­sents Mc­Don­ald’s hus­band Michael Carew who was al­so charged with fraud and mon­ey laun­der­ing said he too had not been re­leased on bail.

“As far as I am aware he is still in prison,” El­der said.

Carew, Edgar Zephyrine and Vic­tor An­tho­ny re­mained locked be­hind bars last night.

De­lays in process

Crim­i­nal at­tor­ney Fa­reed Ali last night agreed with his law col­league Pamela El­der that the sys­tem in ob­tain­ing bail was an­ti­quat­ed.

Ali out­lined steps a per­son who has been charged has to go through in ac­quir­ing bail.

Step 1) The court must as­cer­tain whether the bailor law­ful­ly owns the prop­er­ty.

Step 2) To as­cer­tain if the par­tic­u­lar prop­er­ty is be­ing used for any oth­er pur­pose col­lat­er­al­ly for bail.

Step 3) The prop­er­ty must show that it car­ries no risks. Fol­low­ing which bail can be ac­cessed.

Ali said that three way process does not take 15 min­utes.

“This process can last from two weeks to a month. If Ms Mc­Don­ald has $2 mil­lion in prop­er­ty she can use, the Clerk of the Peace or the Reg­is­trar of the High Court has to ex­am­ine the doc­u­ments that re­flects own­er­ship of the prop­er­ty. That process means that the Clerk of the Peace and the Reg­is­trar have to call all the courts in T&T to de­ter­mine whether that prop­er­ty/prop­er­ties be­longs to the per­son/peo­ple and is/are cur­rent­ly be­ing used for bail.”

Ali said this re­sults in pro­tract­ed de­lays in the sys­tem.

“Our sys­tem is an­ti­quat­ed in that re­gard.”