Derek Achong

A High Court Judge is ex­pect­ed to de­cide whether At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi can pur­sue his law­suit over Wat­son Duke be­ing ap­point­ed as To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary while still serv­ing as Pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), on April 1. 

Jus­tice Mar­garet Mo­hammed set the date fol­low­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing of the case on Thurs­day.

Mo­hammed was ini­tial­ly ex­pect­ed to hear oral sub­mis­sions in two ap­pli­ca­tions to strike out the case brought by lawyers for the THA, its Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine and Duke, but was forced to ask the par­ties to file writ­ten sub­mis­sions as Se­nior Coun­sel Fyard Ho­sein, who is lead­ing the le­gal team for the AG’s Of­fice, said his client had not pre­pared to present its sub­mis­sions dur­ing the case man­age­ment hear­ing. 

Pre­sent­ing brief sub­mis­sions dur­ing the hear­ing, the THA’s lawyer Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, Au­gus­tine’s lawyer John Je­re­mie, SC, and Duke’s lawyer Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, them­selves all for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­als, claimed that the case was aca­d­e­m­ic and an abuse of process as Duke sub­se­quent­ly ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion from the union. 

“This is a le­gal ad­ven­ture to nowhere,” Ram­lo­gan said. 

Ma­haraj sug­gest­ed that ju­di­cial time and ex­pense could be saved by Mo­hammed in up­hold­ing the ap­pli­ca­tions and re­fus­ing to hear and de­ter­mine the sub­stan­tive case. 

Re­spond­ing to the sub­mis­sions dur­ing the hear­ing, Ho­sein said that al­though Duke ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion, it on­ly took ef­fect on De­cem­ber 31 af­ter the union’s con­fer­ence of del­e­gates ap­proved it al­most two weeks ear­li­er. 

Ho­sein said that the out­come of the law­suit would al­so af­fect as­sis­tant sec­re­tary for the Di­vi­sion of Food Se­cu­ri­ty, Nat­ur­al Re­sources, the En­vi­ron­ment and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Nigel Taitt and Joel Samp­son, who was ap­point­ed as­sis­tant sec­re­tary for the Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment.

He said that Samp­son holds a post in the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and Taitt in the Port Au­thor­i­ty, with both re­ceiv­ing re­mu­ner­a­tion for the same as their re­quests for no pay leave to per­form their THA du­ties were de­nied. 

He not­ed that the Reg­is­tra­tion, Recog­ni­tion and Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Board of the Min­istry of Labour, which ap­proves trade unions for em­ploy­ers, is al­so in­ter­est­ed in the out­come as Duke pre­vi­ous­ly served on it be­fore re­sign­ing. 

In the event that the ap­pli­ca­tions are even­tu­al­ly dis­missed by Jus­tice Mo­hammed, she will then hear and de­ter­mine the sub­stan­tive is­sues in the case. 

The is­sue arose af­ter Duke’s Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) se­cured a land­slide vic­to­ry in the De­cem­ber 6 THA elec­tion. 

Duke was giv­en a three-month ul­ti­ma­tum by Au­gus­tine to sev­er ties with the union, but Al-Rawi sug­gest­ed that he should step down im­me­di­ate­ly. 

In a press re­lease is­sued when the case was filed, the AG’s Of­fice said that it had re­ceived in­quiries from the board and the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) over the is­sue. 

It said be­fore fil­ing the in­ter­pre­ta­tion ap­pli­ca­tion, it re­ceived ad­vice from sev­er­al se­nior coun­sel who “all agreed that there was an is­sue to be de­cid­ed by the court”. 

It not­ed that the ap­pli­ca­tion was not in­tend­ed to “un­seat the elec­tion” of per­sons to the THA’s as­sem­bly or ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil. 

“It mere­ly seeks to clar­i­fy the law in the THA Act, as well as the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act, Chap. 22:01, re­gard­ing the pro­hi­bi­tion against a sec­re­tary of the THA and a per­son in pub­lic life, en­gag­ing in ac­tiv­i­ties which would be in con­flict with his du­ties as a sec­re­tary,” it said. 

“The court’s ul­ti­mate rul­ing will cer­tain­ly as­sist in the main­te­nance of con­fi­dence in the THA and will avoid un­want­ed chal­lenges that may be tak­en against any and/or de­ci­sions tak­en and/or made by the ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil there­by en­sur­ing trans­paren­cy and pro­tect­ing against chal­lenges of un­law­ful­ness,” it added. 

The AG’s Of­fice is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Rishi Dass while Kiel Tak­lals­ingh is ap­pear­ing along­side Ma­haraj and Je­re­mie for the THA and Au­gus­tine. 

Kent Sam­lal and Vishaal Siewsaran are ap­pear­ing along­side Ram­lo­gan for Duke.

The Recog­ni­tion Board is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, Vanes­sa Gopaul, Am­ri­ta Ram­sook and Ryan Grant.