Derek Achong

A High Court Judge has re­fused to de­fer his pre­lim­i­nary rul­ings in a con­tro­ver­sial law­suit over con­tracts award­ed in the run-up to the 2015 Gen­er­al Elec­tion. 

Re­spond­ing to a let­ter sent by lawyers rep­re­sent­ing four con­trac­tors, in which they re­quest­ed an ad­journ­ment un­til af­ter the Mon­day’s 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tions, Jus­tice James Aboud re­fused the lawyers on three grounds. 

In the email re­sponse, which was ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Aboud’s ju­di­cial sup­port of­fi­cer Shar­ma Ram­padarath in­formed the par­ties that the de­ci­sion is long-out­stand­ing, with Aboud work­ing on it since March in ad­di­tion to his nor­mal du­ties.

Ram­padarath al­so stat­ed that Aboud had set Au­gust 6 for the de­liv­ery of his judge­ment long be­fore the elec­tion date was set and an­nounced. 

“The Ho­n­ourable Judge is un­able to ad­just his work sched­ule in Au­gust, as he has many oth­er de­mand­ing and equal­ly im­por­tant ju­di­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and oblig­a­tions on every day in Au­gust,” Ram­padarath wrote. 

In a let­ter sent to Aboud last Fri­day, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Fides, TN Ram­nauth and Com­pa­ny Ltd (TN Ram­nauth), Mooti­lal Ramhit and Sons Con­tract­ing Ltd (Ramhit) and Kall Com­pa­ny Ltd (Kall­co) cit­ed prej­u­di­cial com­ments dur­ing the elec­tion sea­son as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for Aboud post­pon­ing his de­ci­sion. 

In the ap­pli­ca­tions Aboud is sched­uled to rule on, the con­trac­tors are call­ing on the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (EM­BD), which they sued for their pay­ments, to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al par­tic­u­lars on its (EM­BD) counter-claim against them, an­oth­er con­trac­tor, three of its for­mer of­fi­cials and for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal. They are al­so call­ing for the counter-claim to be struck out if the par­tic­u­lars are not pro­vid­ed. 

In the let­ter, at­tor­ney Ka­ri­na Singh claimed that both the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) had made in­flam­ma­to­ry pub­lic state­ments on the al­leged strength or weak­ness of the case. 

Call­ing for the post­pone­ment, Singh said: “This is be­cause the de­liv­ery of the judge­ment pri­or to the elec­tion date, whichev­er side suc­ceeds in the ap­pli­ca­tions be­fore the court, is like­ly to bring the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice in­to po­lit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sy.” 

De­spite the sug­ges­tion, Singh sug­gest­ed that her team has to­tal con­fi­dence in the in­de­pen­dence and im­par­tial­i­ty of the court. 

The law­suit cen­tres around 10 con­tracts for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of roads in Ca­roni which were grant­ed to five con­trac­tors in Sep­tem­ber 2015. Na­mal­co, the fifth con­trac­tor, filed sep­a­rate but sim­i­lar ap­pli­ca­tions, which are to be de­ter­mined by Aboud. 

Mooni­lal, for­mer EM­BD CEO Gary Par­mas­sar, for­mer di­vi­sion­al man­agers Mad­hoo Bal­roop and An­drew Walk­er are list­ed as par­ties to the claim along with the con­trac­tors and are ac­cused of con­spir­ing to­geth­er for them to be award­ed the con­tracts. They have de­nied any wrong­do­ing. 

The com­pa­nies are al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, Jagdeo Singh and Kiel Tak­lals­ingh. EM­BD is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by David Phillips, QC and Ja­son Mootoo.