Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Re­porter

The Gov­ern­ment plans to in­tro­duce the post of Lord Chan­cel­lor of the Ju­di­cia­ry to over­see the day-to-day lo­gis­tics and run­ning of the courts, and na­tion­wide con­sul­ta­tions will be held on this ma­jor change.

And the Law As­so­ci­a­tion has come in for strong crit­i­cism from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Speak­ing at last night's UNC Mon­day Night re­port in Pe­nal, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Gov­ern­ment has to speed up the jus­tice sys­tem.

"We plan to in­tro­duce a Chan­cel­lor in the Ju­di­cia­ry. Cur­rent­ly, our sys­tem has a Chief Jus­tice who has to do the ad­min­is­tra­tion, de­liv­er judg­ments and over­see the whole op­er­a­tions. But at the rate T&T's grown, we've out­lived that kind of mod­el - every­thing is more and more!

"We've dis­cussed; the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, on our in­struc­tions, talked to the Law Re­form Com­mis­sion to ex­am­ine es­tab­lish­ment of a Lord Chan­cel­lor of the Ju­di­cia­ry. The com­mis­sion has pre­pared a re­search note and we'll be re­view­ing that in the Cab­i­net.

"The Chief Jus­tice will still be in charge of the Ju­di­cia­ry, but the Chan­cel­lor will over­see the day-to-day lo­gis­tics and run­ning of the courts. At the same time, the Chief Jus­tice will fo­cus on man­ag­ing le­gal cas­es and over­see­ing judges, mag­is­trates, mas­ters, and oth­er ju­di­cial per­son­nel.”

She added, “The ju­di­cia­ry is in a dif­fi­cult place. The Chief Jus­tice is be­ing bogged down in op­er­a­tional du­ties and dai­ly man­age­ment ac­tiv­i­ties, and is hin­dered from his core func­tion of de­liv­er­ing judg­ments and mon­i­tor­ing ju­di­cial ap­pointees. We can fix the op­er­a­tions and give the Chief Jus­tice and Ju­di­cia­ry what they re­quire- fit for pur­pose hu­man re­sources."

She said they hoped to have leg­is­la­tion draft­ed by Oc­to­ber and will have na­tion­wide con­sul­ta­tions on this.

Heat for Law As­so­ci­a­tion

Tak­ing aim at the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, which yes­ter­day ex­pressed deep con­cern at at­tacks on In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors, the PM said, "In­ter­est­ing­ly, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, which is of­ten crit­i­cised for its si­lence, has sud­den­ly found its voice to ex­press con­cern over what it per­ceives as an at­tack on 'the in­de­pen­dence and in­tegri­ty' of the Sen­ate's in­de­pen­dent bench ... (but) those are the Pres­i­dent's sen­a­tors! LATT is the same body that re­mained silent over the past ten years, when the PNM de­stroyed the sa­cred core of de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples, in­sti­tu­tions, and the rule of law.

"The fact is that the PNM 'eat-ah-food' dunce lawyers have long in­fil­trat­ed the LATT's ex­ec­u­tive and it's high time their po­lit­i­cal hypocrisy and agen­da are ex­posed. Peo­ple are no longer fooled by greedy le­gal fake elites - mas­querad­ing as in­de­pen­dent voic­es - who were qui­et­ly gorg­ing on the Trea­sury ... "

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, "At times, the fa­cade slips, and the av­er­age cit­i­zen can con­nect the dots. Six decades af­ter gain­ing in­de­pen­dence, the pub­lic is awak­en­ing to the fact that those who claim to be in­de­pen­dent are ac­tu­al­ly re­liant on the PNM's favour, and will do any­thing to re­gain their for­mer sta­tus. ... The Law As­so­ci­a­tion’s cha­rade doesn't fool the pop­u­lace."

Fo­cus­ing on cor­rup­tion in the Min­istry of Works, the PM said, "I've re­quest­ed test re­sults for sev­er­al ma­jor road projects for over a month now, and none have been forth­com­ing as peo­ple are hid­ing like cock­roach­es .... tell us about the test­ing for the road projects you did in that month be­fore the elec­tions - paving every­where!"

"If we fail to get them, I in­tend to make a re­quest to the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau to re­view some of the pre­vi­ous­ly award­ed con­tracts and op­er­a­tives at PURE, NID­CO, and the Drainage di­vi­sion."

Kam­la con­test­ing par­ty lead­er­ship

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so an­nounced the par­ty's ex­ec­u­tive will meet this week to de­cide on the date for the par­ty's in­ter­nal lead­er­ship elec­tion - which she will con­test.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­tained the post of leader in the 2022 na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive polls, win­ning 11,554 votes to for­mer MP Dr Fuad Khan's 647. Her term is up this year. The par­ty's in­ter­nal elec­tion last year was for oth­er ex­ec­u­tive posts alone.

Of the up­com­ing lead­er­ship elec­tion, she said, "I in­tend to con­test for the po­si­tion of po­lit­i­cal leader. I hope you'll give me the ho­n­our of lead­ing in this term. Any and every mem­ber of the UNC can file a nom­i­na­tion for the po­si­tion. If you want it, come and take it! I'll be wait­ing."