Richard Lord

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, is call­ing for an in­de­pen­dent Com­mis­sion of En­quiry to in­ves­ti­gate the "dog-eat-dog fight" in the le­gal pro­fes­sion. He said the com­mis­sion should look in­to the al­lo­ca­tion of le­gal work by the state and all state agen­cies and the ef­fect it was hav­ing on the ethics and in­de­pen­dence of the le­gal pro­fes­sion.

In a state­ment is­sued to the me­dia yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj said the com­mis­sion should re­port with­in 21 days of its ap­point­ment. "The time is right to have such a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry to make rec­om­men­da­tions for Gov­ern­ment's con­duct in re­la­tion to the le­gal pro­fes­sion and the ef­fect of Gov­ern­ment's in­ter­fer­ence in the in­de­pen­dence of the le­gal pro­fes­sion," Ma­haraj said.

His state­ment comes in the wake of a war of words be­tween for­mer pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion Karl Hud­son-Phillips and the in­cum­bent pres­i­dent Seenath Jairam over his ac­cep­tance and sub­se­quent re­turn­ing of a le­gal brief for the Min­istry of Fi­nance in the Cli­co/HCU Com­mis­sion of En­quiry.

Fyard Ho­sein and Michael Quam­i­na who were rep­re­sent­ing the min­istry from the start of the en­quiry were fired two weeks ago. Ma­haraj said that mat­ter raised ques­tions about whether the ethics of the pro­fes­sion were be­ing fol­lowed and a con­flict of in­ter­est al­so arose. He said Jairam's re­sponse in the mat­ter was "a per­son­al at­tack on Hud­son-Phillips."

Ma­haraj said at the heart of the open dis­pute on ethics and con­flict of in­ter­est was the ques­tion of vast sums of mon­ey (mil­lions) be­ing spent by the state for le­gal ser­vices. He said "bla­tant bias was be­ing shown in many cas­es in who gets briefs. "This is lead­ing to a mad scram­ble in the le­gal pro­fes­sion-a dog-eat-dog fight to get le­gal work from the Gov­ern­ment for all sorts of nasty ru­mours cir­cu­lat­ing about the re­ten­tion of some of the lawyers."

Ma­haraj said the de­vel­op­ments were hav­ing "a most dam­ag­ing ef­fect on the in­de­pen­dence of the le­gal pro­fes­sion from the Gov­ern­ment."