Derek Achong

Mem­bers of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T have nar­row­ly vot­ed against a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion in At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC.

The no-con­fi­dence mo­tion and a sec­ond mo­tion, call­ing on Ar­mour to re­sign due to his dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion in the State’s pro­tract­ed civ­il as­set re­cov­ery case re­lat­ed to fraud and cor­rup­tion in the con­struc­tion of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, were de­feat­ed by ma­jor­i­ty votes at the end of a spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day evening.

The no-con­fi­dence mo­tion re­ceived 234 votes for and 317 against, while the sec­ond mo­tion over res­ig­na­tion re­ceived 241 votes for and 310 against.

Even if the mo­tions were passed by the mem­ber­ship, they would have had no re­al tan­gi­ble ef­fect, as the as­so­ci­a­tion has no pow­er to com­pel Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to re­voke Ar­mour’s ap­point­ment or to force Ar­mour’s res­ig­na­tion.

In a brief in­ter­view with me­dia per­son­nel af­ter the meet­ing, at­tor­ney Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, who req­ui­si­tioned the meet­ing on be­half of over three dozen mem­bers, said the group of young lawyers was sat­is­fied de­spite the de­feat.

“To­day there was some suc­cess, as we were able to get the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to ap­pear be­fore us. That did not hap­pen the last time a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion was brought,” Tak­lals­ingh said.

He sug­gest­ed that the out­come may be due to the fact that Ar­mour gave a lengthy ex­pla­na­tion at the start of the meet­ing.

“He (Ar­mour) was con­trite and apol­o­gised to the mem­bers. This may have swayed the vote, but we won’t know. We think by hold­ing him to ac­count in some form or fash­ion, we achieved our pur­pose,” Tak­lals­ingh said.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Ar­mour be­gan his ad­dress by say­ing that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had giv­en him time off from a Cab­i­net re­treat to ad­dress the meet­ing.

Sources with­in the as­so­ci­a­tion, who pro­vid­ed a de­tailed syn­op­sis of Ar­mour’s pre­sen­ta­tion dur­ing the pri­vate meet­ing, not­ed that he sought to es­sen­tial­ly re­peat the lengthy ex­pla­na­tion pro­vid­ed in a full-page news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment pub­lished af­ter pub­lic crit­i­cism over his dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion from the US case be­gan.

Ar­mour claimed that his ini­tial af­fi­davit to the court was pre­pared whilst he was abroad in Eu­rope on va­ca­tion and he did not have ac­cess to his of­fice records to ful­ly re­call the ex­tent of his in­volve­ment in the lo­cal Pi­ar­co Air­port case over 14 years ago.

He al­so claimed that he was not al­lowed to rec­ti­fy the er­ror when he had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ver­i­fy his records short­ly af­ter.

“I re­gret and apol­o­gise to you for the mis­take in my af­fi­davit...I made a mis­take, but I did not act dis­hon­est­ly,” Ar­mour told LATT mem­bers via a video con­fer­ence call.

Sources said that Ar­mour was sup­port­ed by sev­er­al se­nior coun­sels in at­ten­dance at the meet­ing, who vot­ed against the mo­tion and spoke high­ly of his pro­fes­sion­al­ism and in­tegri­ty.

Ar­mour al­so re­port­ed­ly re­ceived sup­port from An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Lim­it­ed chair­man Ter­rence Bharath, Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) chair­man Ravin­dra Nan­ga and Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed chair­man Michael Quam­i­na, who are all at­tor­neys.

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Garvin Nicholas was al­leged­ly among a group of mem­bers who sup­port­ed the mo­tions and ad­dressed the meet­ing.

The meet­ing took place be­tween 2 pm and 6 pm, with most of the over 500 par­tic­i­pants join­ing through video con­fer­enc­ing

In late April, Mi­a­mi-Dade Cir­cuit Court Judge Reem­ber­to Di­az dis­qual­i­fied Ar­mour and Se­quor Law, the US law firm which was rep­re­sent­ing this coun­try’s in­ter­est, from con­tin­ued par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Pi­ar­co Air­port civ­il case in that ju­ris­dic­tion.

The judge’s de­ci­sion was re­port­ed­ly based on Ar­mour al­leged­ly down­play­ing his role in pre­vi­ous­ly rep­re­sent­ing for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung in sep­a­rate lo­cal crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings over the Pi­ar­co Air­port project.

How­ev­er, the judge re­fused Kuei Tung’s oth­er ap­pli­ca­tion to strike out the en­tire law­suit.

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al and cur­rent Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi was sub­se­quent­ly ap­point­ed as the sub­sti­tute client rep­re­sen­ta­tive for this coun­try in the case, which is sched­uled to come up for hear­ing in Sep­tem­ber.

The State, through its new le­gal team, has chal­lenged the de­ci­sion but has been re­fused an ex­pe­dit­ed hear­ing of the ap­peal.

In the orig­i­nal req­ui­si­tion for the meet­ing, Tak­lals­ingh said that the group felt that the is­sue should be dis­cussed by the mem­ber­ship, as it con­cerns the in­tegri­ty of the le­gal pro­fes­sion.

“Re­spect­ful­ly, these al­le­ga­tions, if left un­ad­dressed, have the po­ten­tial to erode pub­lic con­fi­dence in our pro­fes­sion, the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice, and the rule of law,” Tak­lals­ingh had said.

PM Row­ley has pub­licly dis­missed the move by the as­so­ci­a­tion to host yes­ter­day’s meet­ing and ad­dressed it at a press con­fer­ence be­fore he left to at­tend a re­cent Cari­com heads of gov­ern­ment meet­ing in Suri­name.

Row­ley said: “As for the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, the on­ly thing I am con­cerned about is who in this coun­try has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pass a vote of no con­fi­dence against the Law As­so­ci­a­tion? Be­cause I want to vote.”

Row­ley al­so claimed that the as­so­ci­a­tion had pre­vi­ous­ly at­tempt­ed to en­trap him to be a wit­ness in an­oth­er mat­ter in­volv­ing Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie.

“So, if you find me un­fazed by the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, I have good grounds be­cause they on­ly seem to be in­ter­est­ed when it is time to cre­ate pub­lic dis­cord. When it’s time to stand up for the pub­lic in­ter­est, they bury their heads in the sand like os­trich­es,” Row­ley said.

Re­spond­ing to Row­ley, the as­so­ci­a­tion stat­ed that it was ob­lig­at­ed to call the meet­ing once it re­ceived a valid req­ui­si­tion from its mem­bers. It al­so called on Row­ley to with­draw his “mis­lead­ing” com­ments in re­la­tion to a pre­vi­ous in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to CJ Archie.