Troubling questions arose last night as to whether Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley can act in deciding if there is a case for Chief Justice Ivor Archie to answer by invoking impeachment proceedings to remove him from office.
In fact, Rowley may have to recuse himself because he had been petitioned by the Chief Justice to assist in granting state housing for three people.
Top lawyers, who reviewed the voluminous investigative report which was expected to be forwarded to the Office of the Prime Minister overnight, admitted that the fact that the Chief Justice had submitted the names of at least three people to the Prime Minister for action in fast-tracking state housing under the Housing Development Corporation, may make it difficult for the Rowley to act in the impeachment process.
Neither Chief Justice Archie nor the Prime Minister has addressed Archie’s 2015 request publicly to Rowley for assistance for the three housing recipients.
A possible option for the Prime Minister, a senior counsel suggested, would be to recuse himself and appoint someone else to act as Prime Minister to make the crucial decision. The attorney noted there was a precedent for this when the sitting Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Roger Gaspard appointed Deputy DPP Joan Honore-Paul to oversee the Emailgate investigation, as Gaspard was a potential witness.
The same had applied when then-DPP Geoffrey Henderson, now a judge of the International Criminal Court, had recused himself from overseeing the investigation into allegations against former Chief Justice Satnarine Sharma, over attempts to influence the outcome of the murder charge against Prof Vijay Naraynsingh. Henderson had appointed Deputy DPP Carla Brown-Antoine, now a High Court judge, to act on this matter.
But the attorney noted that the Constitution is silent on this, as there is no provision for the appointment of a deputy Prime Minister and an acting PM can only be appointed if the substantive officeholder is out of the jurisdiction.
“It’s a mess, it’s a real mess,” the attorney said.
“It will be a real challenge for the Prime Minister and his lawyers. He has to get careful advice. Maybe he may have to recuse himself, that will be a forced option,” the senior attorney, acting on the strict condition of anonymity, said.
The situation developed 24-hours after the membership of the Law Association of T&T voted in favour of recommending that the investigative report is sent to the Prime Minister for his consideration on whether to invoke impeachment proceedings against the Chief Justice under Section 137 of the Constitution.
Although the registered members of the association stand at over 1,000, less than 200 turned up at the Hyatt Regency in Port-of-Spain on Tuesday to vote on a crucial resolution to act on the investigative report.
The membership vote was 150 in favour of forwarding the report to the PM while 32 voted against the resolution.
The report was submitted by two highly respected Caribbean’s legal luminaries — Eamon Harrison Courtenay, a former attorney general of Belize and president of the Grenada Bar Association Francis Alexis.
Courtenay is also a former president of the Belize Bar Association, while Alexis, who has been active in Grenadian politics since 1983, is also a former attorney general.
Archie has been under the public spotlight over his close relationships with convicted felons Dillian Johnson and Kern Romero and recommending on their behalf several people to get fast-tracked HDC housing.
Both Johnson and Romero were involved in a scheme to solicit money from unsuspecting citizens, promising them HDC housing on the basis of their close relationship with the Chief Justice. Johnson was convicted of forging a judge’s signature and Romero was convicted of fraud by promising HDC homes for money.
Questions sent to the Prime Minister, Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi and Communications Minister Stuart Young, via WhatsApp, were not answered last night.
What the report found
According to the confidential LATT report: “The Committee was particularly concerned that neither the Chief Justice nor the Prime Minister had responded to the allegation that the Chief Justice recommended three persons (Dylan Huggins, Carol Williams and Felicia Pierre) for public housing to the Prime Minister (Keith Rowley).”
The Chief Justice has admitted publicly to suggesting the names of “some needy and deserving persons” to the HDC, “for such consideration as might be appropriate,” in 2015, under the Rowley-administration, but is silent on his attempts to fast-track State housing for two other people two years earlier, while the People’s Partnership was in office.
The investigative committee interviewed several people during its probe, including investigative journalist Denyse Renne and reviewed confidential information gathered by the reporter. Former HDC managing director Jearlean John, now deputy political leader of the UNC, current HDC managing director Brent Lyons, former Housing Minister and Opposition chief spokesperson Dr Roodal Moonilal were also interviewed.
Records at the HDC have shown Archie’s attempts to help two people in 2013, but there is no documentary proof to support recommendations for some 10 other applicants in 2015.
The Committee found that Archie “went beyond merely submitting names for such consideration as the HDC might deem appropriate.”
“The Committee was also satisfied that there was an indirect confirmation of the Chief Justice’s advocacy on behalf of applicants in the Chief Justice’s steadfast refusal to respond directly to those allegations. As already noted, in his press release the Chief Justice did not deny the allegations that he contacted the senior HDC officer orally and by WhatsApp and neither did he deny that he communicated with the Prime Minister,” the report stated.
On the issue of the recommendations made by the Chief Justice for over a dozen people to access State housing, the investigative committee found that he had not “elaborated on the procedure he employed to select the persons who were deserving of his intervention.”
“Further, he only addressed those names ‘forwarded’ in 2015. He has not yet addressed the two persons whom the HDC’s records say he recommended in 2013, one of whom was a former employee of the Judiciary,” the report stated.
“From this, the Committee inferred that the Chief Justice sought the Prime Minister’s assistance and had recommended some of the persons on that list to the HDC because Romero, a person with whom he had a close personal relationship, asked him to do so, and not because of need and merit as he claimed,” it added.
The report made it clear that it was not interested in the merits of the close personal relationship Johnson and Romero developed with Archie.
“That is his private business. The Committee was concerned with what appeared to be his lack of judgement in developing these relationships with persons who have brought the office of the Chief Justice into disrepute by their activities,” the report stated.
Archie, in his response to the investigative committee, said he was “unaware of the criminal activities in which Johnson and Romero were engaged and the Committee had no evidence to the contrary.”
Archie, however, has not denied the existence of his relationships with the two men.
Johnson has since fled T&T and is seeking political asylum in the United Kingdom, after claiming someone attempted to kill him. Romero died at hospital in May of this year following a battle with illness.
The report further noted that the Committee specifically asked the Chief Justice to respond to the allegations that he had forwarded the names of Huggins, Williams and others at Romero’s request “and as a favour to him, but he has not yet responded.”
On separate allegations that the Chief Justice attempted to influence Judges of the Supreme Court to change their security arrangements to replace officers of the TTPS Special Branch with a private security firm aligned to Johnson, the Committee said these allegations were not substantiated and decided to take this matter no further.
The report also found as a fact that the security detail for High Court Judge Frank Seepersad, one of two judges who has openly criticised Archie in the media, was discontinued “unilaterally by the Chief Justice without discussion or consultation with the judge.
Names recommended by CJ for HDC housing in 2015
Augustina Alexis
Kathy-Anne Alexis
Nicole St Clair
Agnes St Clair
John Allan
Eboni Fletcher
Hanna Guevara
Jermaine Ferguson
Kern Trotman
Natalie John
Dylan Huggins
Carol Williams
Felicia Pierre