KALI­FA SARAH CLYNE

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan is hop­ing the ju­di­cia­ry will fast-track the tri­al in­volv­ing busi­ness­men Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh and Steve Fer­gu­son, af­ter the dis­missal yes­ter­day of a law­suit against the State stem­ming from the re­peal of Sec­tion 34."It has dragged on long enough...the mat­ter de­serves im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion be­cause this has been an end­less le­gal marathon and we need to put a full stop to it," Ram­lo­gan said dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at his of­fice.

His com­ment came less than two hours af­ter a judge dis­missed a law­suit brought by Fer­gu­son, Ameer Edoo and Mar­itime Life Caribbean Lim­it­ed re­gard­ing the re­peal of Sec­tion 34 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Of­fences) Act.The State was vic­to­ri­ous on all eight points put for­ward by the de­fen­dants.

Ram­lo­gan said once no con­ser­va­to­ry or­der was grant­ed to the de­fen­dants by the Court of Ap­peal, the way would be clear for the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) and the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem to be ac­ti­vat­ed to try the de­fen­dants.A con­ser­va­to­ry or­der or a stay of ex­e­cu­tion would put the crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against the busi­ness­men on hold un­til an ap­peal is giv­en.

He added that the tri­al of the busi­ness­men should be done by an ad-hoc court, one con­vened out­side of the nor­mal le­gal sys­tem, such as was done in the mid-1990s Dole Chadee tri­als.

"This mat­ter has been with the le­gal sys­tem for quite some time. If the way is cleared and there is no con­ser­va­to­ry or­der grant­ed by the Court of Ap­peal or the Privy Coun­cil, then I would be re­spect­ful­ly hop­ing that the Supreme Court of Jus­tice moves very quick­ly and swift­ly to con­vene a court on an ad-hoc ba­sis to treat this mat­ter with the pri­or­i­ty and ur­gency that it clear­ly war­rants," Ram­lo­gan said.

Ram­lo­gan de­scribed yes­ter­day's rul­ing as a com­plete and re­sound­ing vic­to­ry for the rule of law and the Gov­ern­ment.He said: "I want to pay trib­ute to the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice for ac­cord­ing this mat­ter the pri­or­i­ty that was nec­es­sary, hav­ing re­gard to the le­gal im­pli­ca­tions, the wider pub­lic in­ter­est and the need for fi­nal­i­ty to lit­i­ga­tion."Ram­lo­gan said "the almighty above" and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar were the two main­stays through­out the le­gal pro­ceed­ings.

"The Prime Min­is­ter and I dis­cussed this mat­ter at length through many nights while we worked and pro­vid­ed guid­ance to the le­gal team," he added.He said the judg­ment sig­ni­fied the in­tel­lec­tu­al ca­pac­i­ty, le­gal skill and de­ter­mi­na­tion and in­tel­lec­tu­al re­silience of the State to de­fend its in­ter­est against any­one who wished to ex­ploit le­gal loop­holes.