At­tor­neys Faris Al-Rawi and Kei­th Scot­land, who were award­ed se­nior coun­sel sta­tus yes­ter­day, say there may be room for ex­am­in­ing the process, even as they still feel the cur­rent sys­tem is trans­par­ent.

Thir­teen at­tor­neys were pre­sent­ed with their in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment to the rank of se­nior coun­sel dur­ing a cer­e­mo­ny at Pres­i­dent’s House, St Ann’s.

Apart from Al-Rawi and Scot­land, among the oth­ers to be con­ferred silk, based on the ad­vice of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, were their Gov­ern­ment col­league Stu­art Young, as well as Re­gan As­gar­ali, Michael De La Bastide, Gre­go­ry Delzin, Elaine Green, Lee Mer­ry, Mark Mor­gan, Ravin­dra Nan­ga, Win­ston Seenath, Ha­sine Shaikh, An­tho­ny Smart, Annabelle Sook­lal, Justin Phelps and Prakash De­onar­ine.

How­ev­er, for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year, ques­tions about the process of ap­point­ing at­tor­neys to the rank of se­nior coun­sel have been raised.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with the me­dia af­ter the cer­e­mo­ny yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi ques­tioned why some crit­ics who them­selves were award­ed silk, did not re­turn the rank since the very same pro­ce­dure was used.

“I think it is a lit­tle un­for­tu­nate that peo­ple who have neg­a­tive things to say are re­cip­i­ents of the same sys­tem, one would think if you’re protest­ing that se­ri­ous­ly you will give back the in­stru­ment you de­test and the process by which you got it. I am in par­tic­u­lar look­ing for­ward to court de­ci­sions to come, I no­ticed the un­for­tu­nate re­marks of one of my col­leagues and all I would say is that I note that there is a lot of du­plic­i­ty in some of it. You can’t be stand­ing up for what is right and be halfway there,” he said.

But, the new se­nior coun­sel recog­nised there may be some room for a re­view of the sys­tem.

“I wel­come re­form and I wel­come process,” Al-Rawi added.

Over the week­end, Is­rael Khan, SC, said Young was de­serv­ing of the ti­tle but raised con­cerns about Al-Rawi. Khan has al­so threat­ened to seek an in­junc­tion if At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, does not agree to stop the on­go­ing ap­pli­ca­tion process for the ap­point­ment of se­nior coun­sels.

Last year, Khan, who al­so serves as Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, filed an in­ter­pre­ta­tion law­suit chal­leng­ing the se­lec­tion process that has been used since 1964.

Al­so asked about the crit­i­cism of the process, Scot­land, who once worked out of Khan’s cham­bers, said at­ten­tion can be giv­en to what has now be­come an is­sue of con­tention.

“I think we should ap­proach it col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly and find if some­thing is to be cured we cure it, so that the process is more trans­par­ent,” he said.

Asked if he felt the cur­rent process lacked trans­paren­cy, he stat­ed, “I am say­ing it is trans­par­ent. Her Ex­cel­len­cy gave the process, it was a trans­par­ent process but I think in every­thing you can tweak it, you can im­prove it and if that is one of the is­sues that is now around, then maybe it can be ad­dressed.”

Scot­land was re­served in his re­sponse when asked about re­cip­i­ents of the es­teemed ti­tle hav­ing crim­i­nal charges to their names.

In 2018, at­tor­ney Justin Phelps, who was al­so award­ed silk, was found guilty of as­sault.

“I nor­mal­ly speak for me, I try in that re­gard to not be a judge, I judge my­self and my­self alone and I try to walk one foot in front and be­hind of the oth­er. I am not one to cast judge­ment,” Scot­land said. Last year, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar slammed the con­fer­ral of silk to the Pres­i­dent’s broth­er, Col­in Kan­ga­loo, and her hus­band, Ker­wyn Gar­cia, de­scrib­ing it as shame­less.

How­ev­er, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley had then main­tained that no per­son­al ties fea­tured in the se­lec­tion of se­nior coun­sel, on­ly pro­fes­sion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions and that “no fa­mil­ial con­nec­tions were con­sid­ered.”

Mean­while, Chief Pub­lic De­fend­er in the Pub­lic De­fend­ers’ Of­fice Ha­sine Shaikh, one of the youngest re­cip­i­ents of the ti­tle, said she was ho­n­oured and hum­bled.

She al­so spoke about some of the work she has been do­ing at the de­part­ment.

“I think when I as­sumed the role of Pub­lic De­fend­er, I lit­er­al­ly came in­to an of­fice and noth­ing was in it be­cause I was the first. It was some­thing that came from start, the pre­vi­ous AG, Mr Al-Rawi en­vi­sioned, start­ing it was a bit daunt­ing but four years in we have com­plet­ed 311 mat­ters, we cur­rent­ly have about 2,000 mat­ters that are ac­tive, so we have no short­age of work and ul­ti­mate­ly we have changed the cul­ture of what is per­ceived as rep­re­sen­ta­tion for legal­ly aid­ed per­sons,” she ex­plained.

Shaikh said her de­part­ment is cur­rent­ly staffed with 30 at­tor­neys, a short­fall of eight. How­ev­er, she said she un­der­stands the chal­lenges fac­ing the pub­lic ser­vice.

Young, Phelps, and De­onar­ine did not at­tend the cer­e­mo­ny yes­ter­day, as they are out of the coun­try.