Hamid Ghany

In last Tues­day's Ex­press there ap­peared a sto­ry by po­lit­i­cal ed­i­tor Ria Taitt with the head­line Al-Rawi: PM breached le­gal rules. Part of the sto­ry read as fol­lows:

"Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi said yes­ter­day that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar may be guilty of the very thing she has ac­cused him of–a breach of the Civ­il Pro­ce­dures Rules and the rules which gov­ern pro­fes­sion­al con­duct in the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty."The Prime Min­is­ter may be invit­ing a claim of pro­fes­sion­al mis­con­duct," he said. Al-Rawi stat­ed the Prime Min­is­ter breached the Civ­il Pro­ce­dures Rule 29.1.4 when she waved a wit­ness state­ment on the po­lit­i­cal plat­form, 'us­ing it when it is not yet in ev­i­dence, with­out con­sent'.

He said Rule 29.1.4 clear­ly states that "a wit­ness state­ment can­not be used oth­er than in the con­text of the case for which it has been filed and can on­ly be used with con­sent and af­ter it has been put in­to ev­i­dence."

What was most in­ter­est­ing about this as­ser­tion was that it ap­peared in print on Tues­day, March 17, and then prompt­ly went cold. What ap­peared to be a new twist to the on­go­ing bat­tle of codes of con­duct and the ap­pear­ance of a tex­tu­al, rather than an emo­tion­al, fight back by Al-Rawi has not been pur­sued by him based on the ab­sence of any fur­ther re­port­ing on the mat­ter.

The CNC3 7 pm news­cast on Mon­day, March 16, had video of Sen­a­tor Al-Rawi ac­tu­al­ly mak­ing the state­ment about the pos­si­ble breach of the Civ­il Pro­ce­dure Rules as car­ried in the Ex­press the fol­low­ing day.

A deep­er ex­am­i­na­tion of the is­sue raised by Al-Rawi that "a wit­ness state­ment can­not be used oth­er than in the con­text of the case for which it has been filed and can on­ly be used with con­sent and af­ter it has been put in­to ev­i­dence" would lead one to find out that a com­plaint was made to the chief jus­tice for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the post­ing of the David West wit­ness state­ment on the Face­book page of Fix­in' TNT.

On Tues­day, March 17, Ravi B Ma­haraj wrote to the chief jus­tice ask­ing him to in­ves­ti­gate how Fix­in' TNT could have post­ed the wit­ness state­ment of David West on its Face­book page and "us­ing it when it is not yet in ev­i­dence."The e-mail let­ter to the chief jus­tice was copied to just about every­one in the me­dia fra­ter­ni­ty, but there has been lim­it­ed ref­er­ence to it.It is al­so pass­ing strange that Al-Rawi's com­plaint against the Prime Min­is­ter for wav­ing a wit­ness state­ment on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form has not been pur­sued fur­ther.

Per­haps the more in­ter­est­ing as­pect of the post­ing of the wit­ness state­ment of David West on the Fix­in' TNT Face­book page was that ear­li­er in the day, dur­ing the af­ter­noon dri­ve time an an­nounc­er on a ra­dio sta­tion read out para­graph 20 of the said wit­ness state­ment and then told his au­di­ence to look out for it be­ing post­ed on the Fix­in' TNT Face­book page.

Giv­en the ci­ta­tion of this par­tic­u­lar sec­tion from the Civ­il Pro­ce­dures Rule by Sen­a­tor Al-Rawi in re­spect of the Prime Min­is­ter wav­ing a doc­u­ment on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form, one would imag­ine that the post­ing of the David West wit­ness state­ment on a Face­book page be­fore it is ac­cept­ed in­to ev­i­dence would at­tract far more at­ten­tion than wav­ing a doc­u­ment.

Go­ing deep­er than that, one would imag­ine that read­ing out para­graph 20 from that doc­u­ment for the gen­er­al pub­lic to hear over the air­waves and then in­di­cat­ing that you should look out for it on a Face­book page would con­vey knowl­edge of the in­ten­tion of Fix­in' TNT to do ex­act­ly what they did.

The an­nounc­er on the ra­dio sta­tion did all of this on Mon­day, March 9, just hours be­fore Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­dressed a UNC Mon­day Night Fo­rum. Why has there been very lim­it­ed men­tion of the let­ter to the chief jus­tice by Ravi Ma­haraj which es­sen­tial­ly falls in­to the ar­gu­ment raised by Al-Rawi in re­la­tion to the Civ­il Pro­ce­dures Rule 29.1.4 ref­er­enced in the Ex­press sto­ry?

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Ravi Ma­haraj al­so rais­es is­sues about the Da­ta Pro­tec­tion Act 2011 be­cause the use of Drop Box by Fix­in' TNT places the wit­ness state­ment in the Unit­ed States and al­so there­by "us­ing it when it is not yet in ev­i­dence, with­out con­sent."Are Fix­in' TNT and the ra­dio sta­tion that cued up the post­ing of David West's wit­ness state­ment in breach of the Civ­il Pro­ce­dures Rule cit­ed by Al-Rawi in the Ria Taitt sto­ry?

These oth­er facts re­main silent, but may yet be ex­posed based on the re­sponse of the Chief Jus­tice to the re­quest by Ravi Ma­haraj for him to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter.For the time be­ing, it seems that the sto­ry has gone cold and needs fix­ing.One could spec­u­late that it might have been giv­en more po­lit­i­cal promi­nence if the Prime Min­is­ter stood alone be­ing ac­cused of a breach.Shar­ing the stage with Fix­in' TNT and a ra­dio sta­tion might not be what the doc­tor (or per­haps lawyer) or­dered to keep this al­le­ga­tion alive.