Richard Lord

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Bridgid An­nisette-George yes­ter­day re­turned to serve cit­i­zens, this time in her ca­pac­i­ty as a civ­il at­tor­ney. An­nisette-George, who re­signed as at­tor­ney gen­er­al in May, opened her new law of­fices on Pic­ton Street, New­town, yes­ter­day, af­ter a prayer ser­vice.

Dur­ing a brief ex­clu­sive in­ter­view, An­nisette-George said af­ter leav­ing the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al she has spent the past few weeks "try­ing to chart my course for­ward." She added that af­ter the pe­ri­od of re­flec­tion she "de­cid­ed to go back to what I did best, and that was to re-en­ter pri­vate prac­tice.

An­nisette-George, who looked re­laxed but busi­nesslike said since she was nine years of age, she want­ed to be a lawyer. "My thrust was al­ways ser­vice...I saw the law as a means to serve peo­ple and I felt that re­vert­ing to what I did was the best was to con­tin­ue serv­ing cit­i­zens," the for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al said.

An­nisette-George said she left Ca­bil­do Cham­bers of­fice on St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, with her in­tegri­ty in­tact. "My in­tegri­ty has al­ways been very im­por­tant to me and in pub­lic life I sought to dis­charge my func­tion with in­tegri­ty, and cer­tain­ly, in my pri­vate prac­tice, in­tegri­ty con­tin­ues to be the bas­tion of my fo­cus."

In re­sponse to an­oth­er ques­tion, An­nisette-George said she would like to ad­vise cit­i­zens of T&T that while the world may view wealth as the pil­lar of suc­cess, those ob­jec­tives must not be the be-all and end-all of life. While ad­mit­ting that wealth was im­por­tant and de­sir­able, she said cit­i­zens should place equal em­pha­sis on cer­tain virtues, prin­ci­ples and val­ues. She said more at­ten­tion should al­so be placed on im­prov­ing fam­i­ly life in T&T.

"To have wealth and not be found­ed in prin­ci­ples, val­ues and fam­i­ly is re­al­ly to have noth­ing," An­nisette-George said. Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning told Par­lia­ment in May that An­nisette-George had ten­dered her res­ig­na­tion be­cause of a pos­si­ble con­flict of in­ter­est in the on­go­ing Cli­co in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Re­li­able sources have, how­ev­er, said that An­nisette-George was asked to re­sign over dif­fer­ences she had with Man­ning. For­mer High Com­mis­sion­er to Lon­don John Je­re­mie has re­placed An­nisette-George as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

The res­ig­na­tion

?An­nisette-George ten­dered her res­ig­na­tion to Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning on May 26, 2009, af­ter serv­ing from 2007. PM Man­ning said in Par­lia­ment one day lat­er that AG An­nisette George re­signed be­cause of an im­mi­nent con­flict of in­ter­est in the Cli­co in­ves­ti­ga­tion. He said An­nisette-George had done the ho­n­ourable thing and "has gone very, very high in­deed."

Sources, how­ev­er, in­sist­ed that she was forced out of of­fice by the PM. On May 29, An­nisette George va­cat­ed the Ca­bil­do Cham­bers of­fice while High Com­mis­sion­er to the UK , John Je­re­mie, re­turned to T&T to as­sume the port­fo­lio. On May 29, Je­re­mie was sworn in for a sec­ond term as AG by Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards. He promised to deal with the is­sue of cor­rup­tion in T&T.