At­tor­ney-at-law and op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi's de­fence of his dual role in the defama­tion case against Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley dif­fers from the le­gal opin­ions of se­nior at­tor­neys in this mat­ter.For­mer chief jus­tice Sat Shar­ma and Mar­tin Daly SC have both said that Mr Al-Rawi was wrong to act as in­struct­ing at­tor­ney and wit­ness in the case–and their views ap­pear to be in line with the Code of Ethics in the Le­gal Pro­fes­sion Act Chap­ter 90:03.

The Act, which reg­u­lates the pro­fes­sion­al prac­tice, eti­quette, con­duct and dis­ci­pline of at­tor­neys, states that an at­tor­ney-at-law should not ap­pear as a wit­ness for his own client. The prac­tice is for an in­struct­ing at­tor­ney to go in­to the wit­ness box on­ly for pro­ce­dur­al mat­ters, or the ser­vice of a doc­u­ment.If it con­cerns oth­er mat­ters–as is the case with Mr Al-Rawi who was filed a lengthy wit­ness state­ment in the case–it would be prefer­able for the in­struct­ing at­tor­ney to with­draw as a wit­ness in the case.

This in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Act is re­in­forced by the rul­ing of Jus­tice Vashiest Kokaram who said an "at­tor­ney can­not be a wit­ness in the same mat­ter." In his 2012 judge­ment in the mat­ter of Ho­sein Con­struc­tion vs 3G Tech­nolo­gies Jus­tice Kokaram said:

"It is ob­jec­tion­able for the in­struct­ing at­tor­ney to give ev­i­dence while be­ing an at­tor­ney on record for this par­ty. It is a breach of rule to de­fy the code of ethics."

Asked for his opin­ion re­cent­ly, Jus­tice Shar­ma did not mince words.He said that what Al-Rawi did was un­eth­i­cal, and was made worse by his in­sis­tence that he was do­ing noth­ing il­le­gal. An­oth­er for­mer chief jus­tice, who did not go on record, of­fered a sim­i­lar view.That body of le­gal opin­ion is fur­ther bol­stered by the analy­sis of­fered Mr Daly who, af­ter be­ing shown Mr Al Rawi's 12-page wit­ness state­ment, said it was com­plete­ly at odds with the pro­fes­sion­al in­de­pen­dence of an in­struct­ing at­tor­ney.

His im­me­di­ate re­ac­tion was: "Mr Al-Rawi would be well ad­vised to con­sid­er tak­ing him­self off the record in the mat­ter." Mr Al-Rawi has now agreed to do that but the is­sue is still alive. The on­ly way he could have avoid­ed that, as a po­ten­tial wit­ness in the case, was not to join Dr Row­ley's le­gal team in the first place.

As it is, dam­age has been done. Dr Row­ley and his team say that Mr Al-Rawi's re­moval was pure­ly in the in­ter­est of trans­paren­cy, but it seems that they can­not shake off the per­cep­tion that they are re­spond­ing to po­lit­i­cal pres­sure. Both men have been in a very un­com­fort­able spot­light since Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar raised the is­sue at the UNC pub­lic meet­ing just over a week ago.The is­sue has be­come yet an­oth­er dark cloud hov­er­ing over this defama­tion law­suit and all the oth­er is­sues em­a­nat­ing from the sec­tion 34 rev­e­la­tions.