At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, has fi­nal­ly bro­ken his si­lence on his dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion by a Mi­a­mi court from rep­re­sent­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go in a civ­il mat­ter tied to the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port fraud case.

In a full-page ad­ver­tise­ment, which ap­peared in yes­ter­day’s news­pa­pers, the AG made it clear there was nev­er any in­ten­tion on his part to mis­lead the court in any way.

He al­so sought to ex­plain that he signed the af­fi­davit about his in­volve­ment in the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port fraud case based en­tire­ly on his best rec­ol­lec­tion of events which oc­curred some 14 years ago.

Ar­mour al­so put for­ward that he was on va­ca­tion with his fam­i­ly in Eu­rope at the time he was asked to make the state­ment and did not have any de­tailed doc­u­men­ta­tion on the mat­ter with him when he signed the af­fi­davit—which gives the sug­ges­tion that he could not cor­rect­ly re­call every­thing that oc­curred dur­ing the case over a decade ago.

While the coun­try, and in par­tic­u­lar those who have been de­mand­ing an­swers about this lat­est im­broglio would no doubt wel­come the AG’s ef­forts to al­lay their con­cerns, his ex­pla­na­tion re­mains want­i­ng and even pro­vokes fur­ther ques­tions.

How could any at­tor­ney, more so a dis­tin­guished se­nior coun­sel, not re­call his in­volve­ment and con­tri­bu­tions to one of the biggest le­gal mat­ters in this coun­try’s his­to­ry? Nat­u­ral­ly, this lack of mem­o­ry was raised dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate sit­ting by the Op­po­si­tion, who re­main un­apolo­getic in their calls for him to ei­ther re­sign or be fired by the Prime Min­is­ter.

Still, even more ques­tions arise fol­low­ing his lat­est at­tempt at ex­plain­ing the cur­rent con­tro­ver­sy which has de­vel­oped over his em­bar­rass­ing slip-up.

Could the AG not have re­spond­ed and in­formed the coun­try about his poor rec­ol­lec­tion of events weeks ago and quelled some of the dis­qui­et which even­tu­al­ly erupt­ed? Could the AG not have held a news con­fer­ence and spo­ken to the pub­lic via the me­dia and faced ques­tions about his in­volve­ment in the mat­ter, in­stead of hid­ing be­hind a me­dia state­ment?

And now that he has bro­ken his si­lence on the mat­ter and is await­ing a de­ci­sion on the ap­peal of this coun­try’s le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the case, does Ar­mour have the moral au­thor­i­ty to per­form his du­ties as AG, giv­en that he has now ad­mit­ted his af­fi­davit was, in fact, in­ac­cu­rate?

The se­nior coun­sel must ful­ly grasp and com­pre­hend his role and func­tions as the coun­try’s At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. Not on­ly is he the le­gal ad­vi­sor to the State but he is al­so the tit­u­lar head of the bar of this coun­try and he must be the first por­tal of call for hon­esty, in­tegri­ty and sound knowl­edge of le­gal af­fairs.

In his po­si­tion, there is no room or lee­way for poor rec­ol­lec­tion of facts and sign­ing an im­por­tant af­fi­davit with murky mem­o­ry. Sure­ly, he ought to know the weight and sig­nif­i­cance an af­fi­davit car­ries and what the slight­est mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the truth could spell be­fore en­deav­our­ing to do a doc­u­ment while un­pre­pared.

With lawyers al­so now mov­ing on a vote of no-con­fi­dence in AG Ar­mour, the ques­tion is does he and the Prime Min­is­ter tru­ly think he has the moral au­thor­i­ty to re­main this coun­try’s At­tor­ney Gen­er­al?