Vul­gar. This was the word used by three Court of Ap­peal Judges to de­scribe com­ments made by Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal in re­la­tion to their han­dling of a pro­ce­dur­al ap­peal in a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar car­tel case over con­tracts award­ed by the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (EM­BD) in the run-up to the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion. 

Mooni­lal made his com­ments in re­la­tion to a pre­vi­ous state­ment made by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley dur­ing a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Mon­day Night Fo­rum in Aranguez, last Mon­day. 

On June 12, Row­ley ap­peared to have al­leged the Court of Ap­peal had ruled in EM­BD’s favour in the ap­peal and ruled that the de­fen­dants in­clud­ing Dr Mooni­lal had to file their de­fences for the pro­tract­ed case to go to tri­al.

Row­ley made veiled ref­er­ences to a con­sent or­der that was en­tered dur­ing a hear­ing of the ap­peal last month, un­der which the de­fen­dants in the sub­stan­tive case, who are not pur­su­ing the ap­peal, agreed to file their de­fences with­in 45 days of the Ap­peal Court de­liv­er­ing its rul­ing.

Mooni­lal sought to ques­tion how Row­ley could make pro­nounce­ments on the case be­fore the court ruled as he ques­tioned whether he (Row­ley) was in “ca­hoots” with the mem­bers of the pan­el. 

Ap­pel­late Judges Nolan Bereaux, Mark Mo­hammed, and Maria Wil­son sought to ad­dress both sets of com­ments dur­ing a hear­ing at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. 

Jus­tices Mo­hammed and Wil­son de­liv­ered a joint state­ment, while Jus­tice Bereaux pro­vid­ed his own analy­sis. 

All three judges agreed that Row­ley’s state­ment on the progress of the case was in­ac­cu­rate. 

In their state­ment, Jus­tices Mo­hammed and Wil­son said that while crit­i­cism of the Ju­di­cia­ry was ac­cept­able, the im­pu­ta­tion of im­prop­er mo­tives was not. 

They claimed that a sim­ple state­ment from them de­plor­ing the “vul­gar­i­ty” of Mooni­lal’s state­ment was the ap­pro­pri­ate re­sponse. 

“We have a de­gree of con­fi­dence that right-mind­ed per­sons would know the pan­el act­ed prop­er­ly,” they said. 

In his state­ment, Jus­tice Bereaux sug­gest­ed that lawyers for the con­trac­tors, who pur­sued the ap­peal, should have con­sult­ed with EM­BD’s lawyers be­fore writ­ing the pan­el to com­plain over Row­ley’s state­ment. 

“A sim­ple phone call would have suf­ficed,” he said. 

Jus­tice Bereaux al­so claimed that pros­e­cut­ing Mooni­lal for the of­fence of scan­dal­is­ing the court was in­ap­pro­pri­ate in the cir­cum­stances. 

He sug­gest­ed that such a pros­e­cu­tion would af­fect cit­i­zens’ free speech rights and would af­fect pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence in the Ju­di­cia­ry. 

“As the Ju­di­cia­ry, we must be open to pub­lic crit­i­cism,” Jus­tice Bereaux said. 

“We must suf­fer silent­ly while puerile com­ments are made by the mis­guid­ed,” he added. 

The ap­peal is now set to be heard by an­oth­er ap­peal pan­el as Jus­tice Wil­son re­cused her­self yes­ter­day based on the fact that her broth­er pre­vi­ous­ly served on EM­BD’s Board.