Gail Alexan­der

Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie's re­cent state­ment against Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard was pre­sump­tu­ous and to­tal­ly out of place, says Op­po­si­tion UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who is now ac­cus­ing Archie of gang­ing up with the Prime Min­is­ter and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al against Gas­pard.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar who has al­leged that Gov­ern­ment is "fear­ful" of Gas­pard be­cause of the Vin­cent Nel­son scan­dal, is al­so now call­ing on Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to probe al­leged wit­ness- tam­per­ing by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi and the Gov­ern­ment in the Nel­son mat­ter.

Speak­ing at the UNC's Mon­day Night Re­port meet­ing in St He­le­na, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said too many dan­ger­ous things are hap­pen­ing in T&T.

"I con­demn in the strongest pos­si­ble terms the thug­gish, gang­ster-like at­tacks on DPP Gas­pard - the high­est of­fices in the land, they’re op­er­at­ing like thugs and gang­sters!” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

Cit­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s at­tack on the DPP at a re­cent PNM meet­ing, she not­ed it was “trump and fol­low suit” with the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s crit­i­cism of “un­der­per­for­mance" by the Of­fice of the DPP.

"And I’m so dis­tressed to see last week­end the high of­fice of the Chief Jus­tice jump­ing in­to the gayelle. Why are you en­gag­ing in that bat­tle?!”

She was re­fer­ring to the CJ's state­ment last Fri­day in which he blamed the DPP for the con­tin­u­ing staff short­age due to his fail­ure to sug­gest names and ap­praisals for pros­e­cu­tors to be pro­mot­ed and of fail­ing to in­di­cate the ur­gency need­ed in fill­ing va­can­cies in his of­fice.

She said she’d nev­er called out a Chief Jus­tice but Archie's state­ment was pre­sump­tu­ous and “to­tal­ly out of place.”

Not­ing that the CJ was the DPP’s boss, she said, "Why would a CJ jump in­to the po­lit­i­cal fray in a 10-page pub­lic state­ment - why you didn’t call in the man and say ‘DPP, you have prob­lems - let’s talk’.

“Why now? This isn’t the first time the DPP has said he has a staff short­age ... if since 2014 the de­part­ment was un­der­staffed … I call on the CJ to ex­plain why now? Did some­body tell you to do it? Is it pay­back time Chief Jus­tice?! Is it trump and fol­low suit with the PM and AG and you com­ing to back them up?”

Claim­ing the PNM has a his­to­ry of un­der­min­ing in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions if they can­not con­trol them, Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed, "Look what hap­pened to­day – great big news in town – (Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th) Row­ley has sworn in his pup­pet Pres­i­dent to­day…every in­sti­tu­tion he wants con­trol of.”

She said Gas­pard was a de­cent, ho­n­ourable in­de­pen­dent DPP, and the Prime Min­is­ter “doesn't want that as he wants a pup­pet whose strings he can pull.” She added when Gas­pard talked of staff short­age, "Row­ley got his 'next pup­pet' to talk." She warned that peo­ple who live in glass hous­es shouldn’t throw stones.

She said the CJ didn’t un­der­stand the work­load of DPP at­tor­neys and - de­tail­ing their work- she said one couldn’t mea­sure how many lawyers were need­ed by the judges in courts.

“So it’s out of or­der – non­sense!” she added of Archie's state­ment.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar called on Row­ley to say if Gov­ern­ment com­plet­ed the work rec­om­mend­ed by Spe­cial Branch for safe­ty on the Park Street build­ing for the DPP. She called on him and CoP Hare­wood-Christo­pher to say if there are mul­ti­ple Spe­cial Branch re­ports on the build­ing.

“If Spe­cial Branch is say­ing it’s dan­ger­ous, why blame the DPP – there’s more in the mor­tar, how come they’re go­ing af­ter the DPP af­ter he dis­con­tin­ued the case against Ramdeen and Ram­lo­gan and Bas­deo Pan­day and oth­ers,” she added, query­ing if there’s a con­spir­a­cy to run Gas­pard out of of­fice and get an­oth­er to do their bid­ding.

“Are there plans afoot to smear the DPP and hound him out of of­fice? He’s clear­ly up­set the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate, don’t be sur­prised if you see all sorts of sto­ries about him, they get their trolls to do as they can­not con­trol him.”

Al­leg­ing an or­ches­trat­ed at­tempt against Gas­pard, she claimed the PM and CJ are pro­tect­ing each oth­er. She called on the CoP to probe al­leged mis­con­duct in pub­lic of­fice by Al-Rawi con­cern­ing the in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment for Nel­son in the Ram­lo­gan/Ramdeen case.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “They promised (Nel­son) a Pres­i­den­tial par­don.”

She added that this might well hap­pen now that there’s an al­leged "PNM pup­pet in Pres­i­dent’s House." She hint­ed that the UNC has more on Archie's con­duct.