Fran­cis Joseph

Pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion Mar­tin Daly, SC, said yes­ter­day that peo­ple in re­spon­si­ble pub­lic of­fice were los­ing their cool in the face of rea­soned com­ment which they do not like. Daly's com­ments come one day af­ter At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie used the bud­get de­bate in the Sen­ate to se­vere­ly crit­i­cise him over com­ments made sur­round­ing the af­fi­davit filed in court by Ja­maat al Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr in which an al­le­ga­tion was made by Bakr that he had struck a deal with Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, pri­or to the 2002 gen­er­al elec­tions. Not on­ly did Je­re­mie use the bud­get de­bate to blast the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, but he walked with a pre­pared speech for the oc­ca­sion. In his con­tri­bu­tion Je­re­mie ac­cused Daly of speak­ing "a lie" in his crit­i­cism of re­tired Jus­tice of Ap­peal Jean Per­manand, a mem­ber of the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.

Daly, who is cur­rent­ly out of the coun­try said, "It came to my at­ten­tion through read­ing the news­pa­pers on the In­ter­net that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al had 'called me out' in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day (Wednes­day) in con­nec­tion with the per­for­mance of my du­ties as Pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, pre­sum­ably re­ly­ing on the cov­er of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege." Daly said he did not have a copy of Hansard, nei­ther had he re­ceived a let­ter from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al or the le­gal opin­ions on which Je­re­mie re­lies, con­cern­ing the ad­mis­si­bil­i­ty of the af­fi­davit.�He promised to re­spond when he re­ceives these doc­u­ments. He said, "My first im­pres­sion drawn from the re­ports I have read is that those in re­spon­si­ble pub­lic of­fice are los­ing their cool in the face of rea­soned com­ment which they do not like."

Daly in a col­umn last Sun­day said, "the sub­ject is ha­tred and in­tol­er­ance of com­pet­ing views, and it may be use­ful­ly read in light of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's be­hav­iour in Par­lia­ment. He said, "I will not of course de­scend in­to per­son­al at­tack, but I look for­ward to en­gag­ing fur­ther on the im­por­tant is­sue of the po­lit­i­cal ex­ec­u­tive's treat­ment of the ju­di­cia­ry and the law of­fices of the State." On Sep­tem­ber 11, Jus­tice Ra­jen­dra Nar­ine, or­dered that 11 prop­er­ties owned by Bakr and se­nior Ja­maat mem­ber Kala Akii Bua be put up for pub­lic auc­tion to sat­is­fy a $40 mil­lion debt to the State for the de­struc­tion of Po­lice Head­quar­ters dur­ing the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup.

In his judg­ment, Nar­ine di­rect­ed that Bakr's af­fi­davit be sent to the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the act­ing Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions for in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

This was done de­spite the fact that both the Court of Ap­peal and the Privy Coun­cil struck out the af­fi­davit from the sum­mons for sale mo­tion. On Sep­tem­ber 14, Je­re­mie re­spond­ed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives crit­i­cis­ing the judge for send­ing the af­fi­davit for in­ves­ti­ga­tions. Per­manand went on tele­vi­sion and said what Nar­ine did was wrong. Daly, through the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, re­spond­ed, con­demn­ing both Je­re­mie and Per­manand, say­ing that Nar­ine was per­fect­ly cor­rect in send­ing the af­fi­davit for in­ves­ti­ga­tion, al­though it was struck out as part of Bakr's de­fence.