SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

RHON­DOR DOWLAT

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has ap­pealed the in­junc­tion grant­ed to for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Gary Grif­fith by a High Court.

The in­junc­tion was grant­ed yes­ter­day by Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad pre­vent­ing the Prime Min­is­ter from bring­ing the Firearm Users Li­cens­es (FUL) au­dit re­port be­fore the Par­lia­ment.

Ram­per­sad ruled that the prime min­is­ter can­not lay the ex­ec­u­tive sum­ma­ry of the Firearm Au­dit Re­port in the Par­lia­ment.

In mid-Ju­ly at a press con­fer­ence, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said the find­ings of the re­port were dis­turb­ing and he had sent a copy to the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.

He an­nounced that he in­tend­ed to lay the ex­ec­u­tive sum­ma­ry of the re­port in Par­lia­ment. The re­port de­tails the ac­tiv­i­ty which took place in the Firearms Unit of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice un­der the tenure of for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Gary Grif­fith.

Leaked re­ports to the me­dia sug­gest­ed un­der Grif­fith's tenure, over 140,000 Firearm Users Li­cens­es were grant­ed.

Grif­fith's re­sponse to the prime min­is­ter was swift, he filed a High Court in­junc­tion, ques­tion­ing the va­lid­i­ty of the re­port. He said the re­port vi­o­lates nat­ur­al jus­tice, as he was not giv­en a right to re­spond to al­le­ga­tions against him.

In re­sponse, an at­tor­ney from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's of­fice sent him a let­ter say­ing the Gov­ern­ment would stay its hand in pub­li­cis­ing the re­port.

Ram­per­sad, how­ev­er, ruled in Grif­fith's favour say­ing the let­ter does not have At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour's sig­na­ture and may not be valid.

Ram­per­sad, in his rul­ing, said "No valid rea­son has been prof­fered to this court in the cir­cum­stances of the said let­ter and its no­ble in­ten­tion but its clear de­fi­cien­cies in law and the fact that there may be doubts as to its ef­fi­ca­cy and en­force­abil­i­ty.

"The sev­enth de­fen­dant’s po­si­tion was quite clear­ly an­nounced by him as the claimant be­ing one of his biggest mis­takes. The mat­ter is ob­vi­ous­ly a hot one for the po­lit­i­cal hus­tings should the need arise be­fore this court rules on the va­lid­i­ty of the re­port.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

"As has been stat­ed in the pub­lic do­main, 'pol­i­tics has a moral­i­ty of its own' and the court ought not, re­spon­si­bly, to al­low any va­garies or doubts to pre­vail in a sen­si­tive mat­ter such as this."Ac­cord­ing to Jus­tice Ram­per­sad, the court can­not take the chance that po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­di­en­cy may con­flict with ju­di­cial cer­tain­ty. "The court can al­ready see po­ten­tial for con­flict if the un­der­tak­ing is not one that is giv­en to the court in the course of its con­duct of the case but left, in­stead, to an un­sanc­tioned mis­sive from an un­known third par­ty."

He said, 'The force of the ve­he­mence born out of this re­port, and ex­pressed in pub­lic as al­leged by the claimant, sug­gests that its pre­ma­ture pre­sen­ta­tion or pro­duc­tion would have far-reach­ing ef­fects in the pub­lic do­main."

Re­fer­ring to the let­ter dat­ed Au­gust 29 to Row­ley by At­tor­ney Lar­ry Lal­la, Ram­per­sad said "A prop­er con­sid­er­a­tion of this let­ter in­di­cates that the let­ter it­self was not writ­ten or signed by the Ho­n­ourable At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and there­fore was not an un­der­tak­ing giv­en by him di­rect­ly.

"Fur­ther, the as­sur­ance pur­port­ed­ly giv­en was by the Ho­n­ourable At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, but there is no such as­sur­ance di­rect­ly giv­en by the de­fen­dants in this mat­ter."

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad said that when the mat­ter came up be­fore this court for hear­ing, the court, be­ing cog­nisant of the terms of this let­ter, specif­i­cal­ly asked Se­nior Coun­sel for the first to eighth de­fen­dants if his clients would give an un­der­tak­ing, to which he did not agree.  "Nev­er­the­less ref­er­ence was made in the sub­mis­sions for the first to eighth de­fen­dants to the pur­port­ed un­der­tak­ing above as ground for the court to refuse such an or­der. Ob­vi­ous­ly, these de­fen­dants re­lied up­on the same to be a valid un­der­tak­ing," he added.

The rul­ing not­ed that in the cir­cum­stances, "the court grants an in­junc­tion re­strain­ing the sev­enth re­spon­dent from lay­ing an ex­ec­u­tive sum­ma­ry or any part of the said au­dit re­port be­fore the Par­lia­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go or oth­er­wise pub­lish­ing any por­tion of the con­tents of same."

Ram­per­sad said that the prime min­is­ter, who is the sev­enth named de­fen­dant, has made his po­si­tion clear to the pub­lic.

Ram­per­sad said no doubts should be al­lowed to pre­vail in such a sen­si­tive man­ner, which has made its way in­to the po­lit­i­cal play­ing field.

He al­so ques­tioned: "Why then would the sev­enth de­fen­dant refuse to give an un­der­tak­ing to this court in cir­cum­stances where: They have not per­son­al­ly giv­en the un­der­tak­ing; The un­der­tak­ing was not signed by the Ho­n­ourable At­tor­ney Gen­er­al him­self; The Ho­n­ourable At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, hav­ing dis­cussed the mat­ter with the sev­enth de­fen­dant, was of the view that such an un­der­tak­ing ought to be giv­en, and The mat­ter is now be­fore the court where such an un­der­tak­ing can prop­er­ly be giv­en?"

Attorney General Reginald Armour

ROBERTO CODALLO

What the AG Of­fice says

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, on the heels of the grant­i­ng of the in­junc­tion, ad­vised that an im­me­di­ate ap­peal is be­ing filed ur­gent­ly to cor­rect er­rors made by the rul­ing.

The AG's Of­fice as­sured the pub­lic that the prop­er process was fol­lowed, "The facts are and the ev­i­dence demon­strates that Mr Grif­fith was in­formed that con­sid­er­a­tion was be­ing giv­en as to whether there were per­sons ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by find­ings in the FUL Au­dit Re­port, who may not have had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­ment and make rep­re­sen­ta­tions on the mat­ters giv­ing rise to those find­ings and, if there are such per­sons, as to what steps ought to be tak­en to af­ford those per­sons an op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­ment and make rep­re­sen­ta­tions pri­or to the Re­port or any sum­ma­ry there­of be­ing re­port­ed to Par­lia­ment."

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al al­so as­sured that there would be no pub­li­ca­tion au­tho­rised by the State or its agen­cies of the Au­dit Re­port or any sum­ma­ry there­of, un­less and un­til all per­sons af­fect­ed by find­ings there­in are giv­en that op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Grif­fith says it's de­ceit­ful

When con­tact­ed, Grif­fith said the de­ci­sion to ap­peal shows "De­ceit at the high­est lev­el."

"It is mind-bog­gling that he has the au­dac­i­ty to state that he is giv­ing the as­sur­ance to the coun­try that they in­tend to ap­peal this mat­ter. Out of the 1.4 mil­lion peo­ple, the on­ly per­son is giv­ing that as­sur­ance to is the one who he works for," Grif­fith said.

Grif­fith claimed the ap­peal is a sign of a gal­lop­ing dic­ta­tor­ship, "I have now con­firmed that the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion nev­er with­drew the mer­it list, and they alone had the au­thor­i­ty to do so, which means some­body broke the law, and we had an act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er for over a year which means he de­lib­er­ate­ly sat on it, so he too should be in­ves­ti­gat­ed."