To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

High Court judge Ra­jen­dra Nar­ine put fire in­to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, on Fri­day, of a dis­turb­ing mat­ter long lurk­ing on the pe­riph­ery of the na­tion­al con­scious­ness; the open­ly-ar­tic­u­lat­ed ac­cu­sa­tions of Ja­maat al Mus­limeen leader Abu Bakr that he had struck a deal with the PNM's lead­er­ship in 2002 to trade his or­gan­i­sa­tion's debt to the state for po­lit­i­cal lever­age.

The judg­ment by Jus­tice Nar­ine was the fi­nal act of a le­gal wran­gle that dates back 19 years to the de­struc­tion wrought by the Ja­maat in­sur­rec­tion­ists, and the sub­se­quent ef­forts by the State to ex­tract re­pay­ment for the costs as­so­ci­at­ed with the dam­age suf­fered by its hold­ings dur­ing that time.

The case has tak­en its time, tor­tur­ous­ly and cir­cuitous­ly, it must be not­ed, through the le­gal sys­tem be­fore com­ing to this point, and Jus­tice Nar­ine took ap­pro­pri­ate­ly sober note of the con­tent of Yasin Abu Bakr's ap­peal case be­fore the Privy Coun­cil and the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of his state­ment.

In his 27-page judg­ment, Jus­tice Nar­ine not­ed that:

"These are the pro­nounce­ments of the high­est court in this ju­ris­dic­tion. Yet, as far as the court is aware, no ac­tion has been tak­en by the ap­pro­pri­ate au­thor­i­ties to con­duct a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion of these al­le­ga­tions.

"The al­le­ga­tions made by the sec­ond de­fen­dant (Bakr) are ex­treme­ly se­ri­ous. If they are true, they strike at the heart of our de­mo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem of gov­ern­ment." Abu Bakr's state­ment to the Privy Coun­cil makes cyn­i­cal sense, framed in the con­text of the pol­i­tics of dirty tricks, but the spe­cif­ic ac­cu­sa­tions are damn­ing in their scope.

As the case made its way through the le­gal sys­tem, it came be­fore the Court of Ap­peal, which ruled that the Bakr af­fi­davit was "il­le­gal and un­en­force­able, both un­der Sec­tion 3 of the Pre­ven­tion of Cor­rup­tion Act," fur­ther de­scrib­ing its con­tent as "com­pris­ing scan­dalous ma­te­r­i­al," or­der­ing that the en­tire af­fi­davit be struck out.

Cru­cial to un­der­stand­ing the is­sue, as it re­lates to the Ja­maat's case, is the rul­ing by the Court of Ap­peal, at this point, that the agree­ment de­scribed in the Bakr af­fi­davit was il­le­gal in com­mon law, ren­der­ing it use­less as a le­gal in­stru­ment.

Jus­tice Nar­ine's judg­ment, then, seeks not to clar­i­fy the af­fi­davit as a court doc­u­ment, but as the source of sub­stan­tive ac­cu­sa­tions of im­pro­pri­ety in pub­lic ser­vice of such scale that they de­mand prop­er and in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

More star­tling is the sub­se­quent rev­e­la­tion by act­ing Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Car­la Brown-An­toine, that she was not on­ly in re­ceipt of the Bakr af­fi­davit since May 6, she had fur­ther for­ward­ed it to the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice James Philbert short­ly there­after, well aware of the state­ments and pre­sum­ably the im­pli­ca­tions of the Privy Coun­cil's judg­ment. In re­sponse, CoP Philbert claimed ig­no­rance of the crit­i­cal doc­u­ment, hav­ing re­ceived noth­ing "per­son­al­ly."

In or­der to bring some clar­i­ty to the sit­u­a­tion, all the par­ties in­volved must un­der­stand that what is at stake in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion that Jus­tice Nar­ine has di­rect­ed is noth­ing less than the po­lit­i­cal fu­ture of the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-elect­ed leader of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

It would be un­rea­son­able to ex­pect that the Prime Min­is­ter, should he face court time in de­fence of these ac­cu­sa­tions, would hold him­self to a dif­fer­ent stan­dard than the one he im­posed on Franklyn Khan and Er­ic Williams, when they were called on to re­spond in court to ac­cu­sa­tions that cut to the heart of their ex­e­cu­tion of their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to the State.

Giv­en the se­ri­ous­ness of the mat­ter, this is clear­ly a case that de­mands in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion, led by coun­sel with no af­fil­i­a­tions or links to par­ty or spe­cial in­ter­ests in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The prin­ci­pals in­volved in this mat­ter, as out­lined in the Bakr af­fi­davit, are both very pub­lic fig­ures who have tend­ed to cre­ate strong­ly-po­larised opin­ions.

This is, there­fore, a case that should not be taint­ed by ei­ther the rul­ing par­ty or the op­po­si­tion, who are quite like­ly to be tempt­ed to turn it in­to a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball, and in do­ing so, colour the pub­lic per­cep­tion of an is­sue that de­serves prop­er, thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion.