Fran­cis Joseph

Se­nior Coun­sel Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj sub­mit­ted yes­ter­day that re­tired High Court judge, Lennox Deyals­ingh, was in­de­pen­dent and fear­less. Ad­dress­ing the Court of Ap­peal in the ap­peal brought by Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and his Cab­i­net, Ma­haraj said noth­ing which was said or writ­ten by Deyals­ingh could con­sti­tute ap­par­ent bias.

On Wednes­day, Man­ning's at­tor­ney, Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, asked the Court of Ap­peal to quash the de­ci­sion made by Deyals­ingh and send it back for re­tri­al be­fore an­oth­er judge. He claimed that there was the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ap­par­ent bias in four ar­ti­cles and a let­ter writ­ten to the me­dia by the for­mer judge. The Court of Ap­peal, com­pris­ing Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie, Jus­tice Pe­ter Ja­madar and Jus­tice Nolan Bereaux, re­served judg­ment to Oc­to­ber. On De­cem­ber 7, 2007, Deyals­ingh, pre­sid­ing in the Port-of-Spain High Court, or­dered the Gov­ern­ment to grant leas­es to ex-Ca­roni (1975) Ltd work­ers for lands which were promised to them more than six years ago.

The judge set a dead­line of June 30, 2008, for the two-acre agri­cul­tur­al plots to be leased to 7,900 dis­placed work­ers and or­dered that "prop­er in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing ac­cess, drainage and ir­ri­ga­tion fa­cil­i­ties," be at­tached to each plot. Ma­haraj said there was no mer­it in the ap­pli­ca­tion brought by the Prime Min­is­ter. He said four of the ar­ti­cles were writ­ten by the judge when he was in re­tire­ment. He said those ar­ti­cles were crit­i­cal of the Gov­ern­ment dur­ing the pe­ri­od of time that the ar­ti­cles were writ­ten. "The con­tents of the ar­ti­cles, how­ev­er, clear­ly showed that the crit­i­cisms made by the judge were not di­rect­ed or re­lat­ed to any of the is­sues or mat­ters which he had to de­ter­mine in the Ca­roni case," Ma­haraj said. "It must be shown that the crit­i­cisms in ques­tion were made in re­spect of is­sues which the judge de­ter­mined or which he had to de­ter­mine."

He said judges were ex­pect­ed and trained to be able to judge on the facts and the law rel­e­vant to is­sues be­fore them and to be aware of the pos­si­ble in­flu­ence of their per­son­al views. "In Trinidad and To­ba­go, for­mer politi­cians have been ap­point­ed to the bench...They were ex­pect­ed to set aside their po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tions on ap­point­ment and were con­fi­dent­ly ex­pect­ed to rule with­out par­tial­i­ty in cas­es in­volv­ing the State," Ma­haraj said. In the present case, he said, Deyals­ingh was reap­point­ed to the Bench af­ter the four ar­ti­cles were writ­ten. He said this was a clear in­fer­ence that his ar­ti­cles were not a con­cern to the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. As to the let­ter which was pub­lished on Ju­ly 17, 2006, Ma­haraj said this was writ­ten dur­ing ex­tra­or­di­nary times. He said this was the time when an at­tempt was made to ar­rest then Chief Jus­tice Sat Shar­ma.

"A fair-mind­ed ob­serv­er would have wel­comed this fear­less com­ment from a judge," Ma­haraj said. "There was no link be­tween the con­tents of that let­ter and the Ca­roni mat­ter be­fore the court. "If the judge had crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment for their brazen breach­es in the Ca­roni mat­ter, and then come and sit on the case, al­le­ga­tions could have been made."