Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young tried to re­but the op­po­si­tion's con­dem­na­tion of the mount­ing le­gal fees, but Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar said the courts are on­ly en­gaged be­cause of the gov­ern­ment's own fail­ure to re­spond to re­quests for in­for­ma­tion.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day's de­bate in the Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, the op­po­si­tion leader crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment for re­quest­ing, $190 mil­lion for the of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to pay for le­gal fees.

"This is an ad­di­tion­al amount to that al­ready al­lo­cat­ed in Oc­to­ber...of $63.5 mil­lion, mak­ing a to­tal al­lo­ca­tion for le­gal fees for fis­cal 2023 of $253 mil­lion," she said.

"Thanks to the hard work of a le­gal lu­mi­nary, I call him Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj, did FOIAs (Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act re­quests) over a year, we have dis­cov­ered that over $1 bil­lion has been paid in le­gal fees since this gov­ern­ment came in­to of­fice to the present time."

She went on to list at­tor­neys who are set to re­ceive these pay­ments once the mo­tion is ap­pro­pri­at­ed. Among those list­ed were Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley's per­son­al lawyer, Michael Quam­i­na, hus­band of Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, Ker­wyn Gar­cia and Raphael Ajod­ha who she ques­tioned if he once worked in the same firm with the cur­rent At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Regi­nald Ar­mour. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was un­able to say how much of the $190 mil­lion sup­ple­men­tal funds the lawyers will be paid.

How­ev­er, she said: "MP Sad­dam and oth­ers will have to file an­oth­er ques­tion and see if they'll an­swer and, if not, we'll have to do an­oth­er FOIA to see how much are they go­ing to ben­e­fit out of this sup­ple­men­ta­tion."

Re­spond­ing to the op­po­si­tion leader's state­ment im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter her con­tri­bu­tion, Young slammed Per­sad-Bisses­sar for list­ing the names and her in­sin­u­a­tions- es­pe­cial­ly as she too was a lawyer and car­ries the ti­tle of Se­nior Coun­sel.

"So there­fore that means the Ho­n­ourable mem­ber for Siparia is ex­pect­ed to be a mem­ber of the in­ner bar and one of the du­ties of 'silk' and in­ner bar mem­bers is to pro­tect the pro­fes­sion, to up­lift the pro­fes­sion but to­day we in the House (of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives) and what we had to hear is an at­tack on cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als who were award­ed silk this week and a per­son­al­i­sa­tion of the amount of fees paid to them," he said.

Young al­so flipped Per­sad-Bisses­sar's own ar­gu­ment against her, claim­ing that it's be­cause of the FOIA re­quests and lit­i­ga­tions brought against the Gov­ern­ment by Ma­haraj and af­fil­i­ates of her po­lit­i­cal par­ty.

"It is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment to de­fend the lit­i­ga­tion. So to come here where you on the oth­er side are dri­ving up the cost of lit­i­ga­tion to the state and the state and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al must de­fend the lit­i­ga­tion is a lit­tle hyp­o­crit­i­cal," he said.

"(It's) a lit­tle hyp­o­crit­i­cal to come here this af­ter­noon and say why are you ask­ing for $190 mil­lion when you high­light one of the in­di­vid­u­als who are be­ing used to in­crease the wage bill and the cost of lit­i­ga­tion to the state so that is what this is about."

To this state­ment, Per­sad-Bisses­sar stood on stand­ing or­der 48 (6) say­ing it is the con­sti­tu­tion­al right of every cit­i­zen to have ac­cess to a court of law.

The ar­gu­ment over who was re­spon­si­ble for the high le­gal fees was flipped once again short­ly af­ter Young's con­tri­bu­tion when Ma­haraj re­spond­ed via a re­lease sent to me­dia hous­es. In it, he said, the on­ly is­sues he pressed were via FOIA re­quests which on­ly end­ed up be­fore the courts when the Gov­ern­ment failed to re­spond.

"The ma­jor­i­ty of cas­es that I have had the mis­for­tune of hav­ing trou­ble the courts with are mere­ly FOIA re­quests that the PNM fail to re­spond to in their at­tempts to con­ceal their ac­tions in gov­ern­ment. Al­most every sin­gle FOIA re­quest is met with a fail­ure to com­ply which then ne­ces­si­tates le­gal ac­tion in or­der to ac­cess pub­lic in­for­ma­tion," he said.