Fran­cis Joseph

Bas­deo Pan­day, po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), has lost an­oth­er court bat­tle. Yes­ter­day, Jus­tice Vasheist Kokaram, pre­sid­ing in the Port-of-Spain High Court, dis­missed Pan­day's ju­di­cial re­view mat­ter, in which he had claimed that there was a per­cep­tion that Mag­is­trate Ejen­ny Es­pinet could be bias against him in his cor­rup­tion case. But Kokaram said Pan­day had brought noth­ing to court to show a well-in­formed ob­serv­er would con­clude that be­cause Es­pinet's fa­ther was a for­mer PNM Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter, she would not act fair­ly when she came to judge his case, which has been be­fore her for years. Pan­day was rep­re­sent­ed by British Queen's Coun­sel, Ge­of­frey Robert­son, while Dou­glas Mendes SC and Ian Ben­jamin, ap­peared for Es­pinet.

Kokaram ad­journed the is­sue of costs for Tues­day, when Robert­son would be in Trinidad for an ex­tra­di­tion ap­peal in­volv­ing Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh and Steve Fer­gu­son. Yes­ter­day's loss was an­oth­er in a string of le­gal de­feats for the UNC leader in re­cent years, in­clud­ing his fail­ure to block a re­tri­al on charges of him fail­ing to de­clare his Lon­don Natwest ac­count to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion from 1997 to 1999. In his claim, Pan­day con­tend­ed that Es­pinet's fa­ther, Alexan­der Cham­ber­lain Alex­is, was a for­mer PNM Min­is­ter in the Gov­ern­ment of Dr Er­ic Williams. He al­so con­tend­ed that Es­pinet was a trustee and trea­sur­er of the Mor­ris Mar­shall Foun­da­tion in Laven­tille, which or­gan­i­sa­tion, he claimed, was aligned to the rul­ing PNM par­ty. Pan­day sub­mit­ted that the well-in­formed ob­serv­er must step back and take these facts cu­mu­la­tive­ly to de­ter­mine whether there was ap­par­ent bias.

He fur­ther sub­mit­ted that "the blood of the PNM cours­es through the veins of the mag­is­trate." In his oral judg­ment yes­ter­day, Kokaram said the well-in­formed ob­serv­er would di­gest the fact that Pan­day would say that the charges were po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed. But the ob­serv­er, ac­cord­ing to the judge, would want to know how it was that that mag­is­trate was en­joined in a po­lit­i­cal bat­tle against Pan­day. "How is this mag­is­trate, giv­en her as­so­ci­a­tions as we now know, un­able to pro­fes­sion­al­ly judge the com­mit­tal pro­ceed­ings im­par­tial­ly? The web of links is ten­u­ous," Kokaram said. He added: "Here, the bal­ance be­tween con­fi­dence in the Ju­di­cia­ry and the per­cep­tion of a fair tri­al will meet its wa­ter­loo, if the well-in­formed ob­serv­er is hasty in his de­lib­er­a­tions.

"A civilised so­ci­ety must not be quick to draw ir­ra­tional or hasty con­clu­sions. Re­straint rather than swift con­dem­na­tion is the hall­mark of ma­ture de­lib­er­a­tion," he added. Pan­day, the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, and his wife Oma, are charged with ac­cept­ing a bribe of 25,000 pounds ster­ling from busi­ness­men, Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh and Car­los John. Ravi Ra­j­coomar, who ap­peared for Pan­day, yes­ter­day hint­ed at his client ap­peal­ing the judge­ment He said his client al­so would seek a stay pend­ing the out­come of the ap­peal. The pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry be­fore Es­pinet is not ex­pect­ed to come up be­fore next Jan­u­ary.