With re­port­ing by An­na-Lisa Paul and Rishard Khan

What start­ed with com­plaints by the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) about in­ad­e­quate staff and oth­er con­di­tions at his of­fice that could lead to the col­lapse of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem ear­li­er this month has now de­te­ri­o­rat­ed in­to a pub­lic im­broglio.

The DPP, Se­nior Coun­sel Roger Gas­pard, has come un­der fire from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour and now Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie, who pub­licly chas­tised him in a re­lease on Fri­day night.

Archie, like Ar­mour, has blamed the staff cri­sis at the DPP’s of­fice and the neg­a­tive im­pact on the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem on Gas­pard.

Archie, al­so chair­man of the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion (JLSC), in a state­ment on the Ju­di­cia­ry’s web­site, said he felt com­pelled to make a state­ment to ad­dress “mis­con­cep­tions that are cir­cu­lat­ing in the pub­lic do­main re­gard­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.”

He ac­cused the DPP of per­form­ing poor­ly in fill­ing va­can­cies in his de­part­ment and putting for­ward names and req­ui­site ap­praisals to pro­mote in­di­vid­u­als.

But ac­cord­ing to the head of the Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion, Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan, the sit­u­a­tion has de­gen­er­at­ed in­to “po­lit­i­cal bac­cha­nal and commess.”

While Khan agreed that Gas­pard does have ques­tions to an­swer, he said how the is­sue is un­fold­ing in the pub­lic do­main is un­ac­cept­able.

Chief Justice Ivor Archie

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Is­rael Khan: DPP needs to an­swer, but CJ’s move un­for­tu­nate

Re­fer­ring to Row­ley’s con­cerns over the DPP’s re­fusal to re­lo­cate his of­fice and oc­cu­py a build­ing that had been out­fit­ted to the tune of $43 mil­lion, Khan said the DPP has a moral oblig­a­tion to speak out as to why he did not en­ter that build­ing.

“He must give an ex­pla­na­tion. If the tax­pay­ers spent $43 mil­lion, you must give a rea­son as to why you are not oc­cu­py­ing that build­ing,” Khan said.

He al­so felt that “it is very un­for­tu­nate that the Chief Jus­tice (CJ) jumped in­to this is­sue at this point in time and chose to do it the way he did it. The coun­try will al­ways be scep­ti­cal of what the CJ has to say in re­la­tion to mat­ters like this be­cause he is ob­lig­at­ed to the Prime Min­is­ter for not trig­ger­ing (sec­tion) 137 in or­der to as­cer­tain whether he mis­be­haved in pub­lic of­fice, so he is ob­lig­at­ed to the PM.”

In Ju­ly 2019, Dr Row­ley failed to ini­ti­ate im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings against Archie af­ter dis­re­gard­ing the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s (LATT) ad­vice to in­voke sec­tion 137 pro­ceed­ings against the CJ.

The LATT com­plaint to Row­ley high­light­ed sev­er­al al­le­ga­tions against Archie, in­clud­ing try­ing to fast-track Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) ap­pli­ca­tions for var­i­ous peo­ple. Archie de­nied the claims.

Israel Khan

An up­set Khan felt the mat­ter was be­ing han­dled poor­ly, and in the mean­time, “cit­i­zens of the coun­try are suf­fer­ing, crime is out of con­trol, mur­ders tak­ing place left, right and cen­tre, and hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars spent on the Ju­di­cia­ry and they can­not pros­e­cute peo­ple even if they are in­vit­ed.”

Khan warned, “Crim­i­nals will get the im­pres­sion that the sys­tem is im­po­tent and they will con­tin­ue to do what­ev­er they are do­ing, so we are in a to­tal mess. The crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem will come to a halt if the politi­cians con­tin­ue to be lack­adaisi­cal and try to put blame on each oth­er.”

Asked if the as­so­ci­a­tion felt it was a cal­cu­lat­ed at­tack on the DPP to sus­pend or re­move him from of­fice, Khan said, “The DPP is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed. It would be very dif­fi­cult to oust the DPP from that of­fice. He is a very strong per­son, but strong as he is, he might get fed up and just re­sign...I do not know, it is on­ly so much a per­son can take.

Khan said he felt “It is pol­i­tics that is play­ing above every­body’s head.”

The Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion will be meet­ing with its mem­bers over the week­end and in­tends to re­lease a state­ment on the mat­ter to­mor­row.

Prof Hamid Ghany–CJ should not have in­ter­vened in this im­passe

Prof Hamid Ghany, who spe­cialis­es in Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies, said the Chief Jus­tice should not have in­ter­vened in this im­passe be­tween the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions. “His in­ter­ven­tion has now made a very strong case for sep­a­rat­ing the two roles of the Chief Jus­tice, name­ly as a ju­rist and as head of the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.

“He is speak­ing in his ca­pac­i­ty as chair of the JLSC and he should have ex­er­cised bet­ter judge­ment than to go pub­lic on a mat­ter that now re­quires more light than heat by adding his own heat.”

Ghany said his com­ments would have been bet­ter de­liv­ered be­hind closed doors in a face-to-face meet­ing with the DPP. “Now, the DPP has to de­cide whether he will re­spond to the CJ in pub­lic or de­mand a pri­vate meet­ing with the CJ and make it pub­lic that he has de­mand­ed such a meet­ing,” Ghany added.

He felt it is more than cu­ri­ous “that all of a sud­den the DPP is tak­ing so much pub­lic heat from the Prime Min­is­ter, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Chief Jus­tice ever since he dis­con­tin­ued the charges in the Pi­ar­co 3 case even though those pub­lic com­ments by the PM, the AG and the CJ are all un­con­nect­ed to that case.”

Om Lalla

Om Lal­la: It high­lights a dis­con­nect with­in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem

At­tor­ney Om Lal­la said the dis­pute play­ing out in the pub­lic do­main high­lights a dis­con­nect with­in the coun­try’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. Lal­la felt the sys­tem is be­ing un­der­mined, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing a time when there is al­ready low pub­lic con­fi­dence.

“Once pub­lic of­fices that are meant to be in­de­pen­dent–the Ju­di­cia­ry and the DPP’s of­fice are in any way in­ter­fered with, even if it’s the per­cep­tion of that dis­con­tent, where that dis­con­tent comes up (in the pub­lic do­main) it’s dan­ger­ous. These of­fices should al­ways be al­lowed, at least in the pub­lic’s eyes, to be main­tained with­out any per­cep­tion of in­ter­fer­ence,” he said.

Avory Sinanan

Avory Sinanan: Ap­point a task force to probe the mat­ter

Se­nior Coun­sel Avory Sinanan, a civ­il at­tor­ney, weighed in on the on­go­ing con­tro­ver­sy, say­ing there needs to be a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter. He sug­gest­ed a com­mit­tee should be ap­point­ed to do this.

He said, “Mr Gas­pard has a rep­u­ta­tion for be­ing very straight­for­ward. I don’t think he will be shilly-shal­ly in terms of his com­plaints, and I think that re­al­ly what needs to be done is for a prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion to take place to de­ter­mine the facts.”

“I think the time has come to go back to ba­sics and ap­point a com­mit­tee to look at it from all sides and see how best the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem can be har­nessed, what is re­al­ly need­ed hav­ing re­gards to Mr Gas­pard’s com­plaints, hav­ing re­gards to the PM’s ut­ter­ances, hav­ing re­gards to what is be­ing said by the Chief Jus­tice, and hav­ing re­gard to what is be­ing said by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, oth­er­wise we are in a quick­sand of ru­mours and con­jec­ture.”

Sinanan sug­gest­ed an in­de­pen­dent task force be ap­point­ed to help to quell the fly­ing ru­mours.

Martin Daly

ANISTO ALVES

Mar­tin Daly: Al­le­ga­tions in the pub­lic need to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed

Se­nior Coun­cil Mar­tin Daly al­so shared the view that all al­le­ga­tions on the mat­ter in the pub­lic do­main need to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley

NICOLE DRAYTON

‘DPP could be boot­ed from of­fice’

Mean­while, se­nior le­gal sources are ques­tion­ing whether a plot is afoot to oust Gas­pard.

A se­nior le­gal source told Sun­day Guardian that the im­broglio stemmed from the de­ci­sion by Gas­pard to dis­con­tin­ue high-pro­file cor­rup­tion charges against Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ri­vals of the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.

The le­gal source re­vealed that the frontal at­tack by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, and Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie to pub­licly ad­mon­ish Gas­pard in re­sponse to staff short­age com­plaints at the of­fice of the DPP is not co­in­ci­den­tal but a “cal­cu­lat­ed” strat­e­gy to force Gas­pard out of of­fice.

“There is much more to the im­broglio than an emp­ty build­ing and va­can­cy fill­ing...The mat­ter has turned in­to a pub­lic spat be­cause the Gov­ern­ment has egg on their faces due to cer­tain court mat­ters go­ing down­hill,” one se­nior le­gal source re­vealed.

Dr Row­ley, dur­ing a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing on March 9 claimed that while mil­lions were spent on the new of­fice, the DPP’s fail­ure to move in was a waste of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey.

It is un­known whether Dr Row­ley, as head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, was privy to the Spe­cial Branch re­port that sug­gest­ed safe­ty re­quire­ments for the new Of­fice of the DPP lo­cat­ed at Park and Hen­ry streets, Port-of-Spain.

Three days lat­er, the AG dou­bled down on Row­ley’s at­tack stat­ing that the Of­fice of the DPP was un­der­per­form­ing.

Attorney General Reginald Armour

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie ig­nit­ed the pub­lic spat on Fri­day, stat­ing that the de­bate has reached a stage where “I must speak” and lev­elled fresh claims that the staff cri­sis at the Of­fice of the DPP was due to Gas­pard’s lack of co­op­er­a­tion and ac­tion.

Le­gal sources said re­cent is­sues in­volv­ing the DPP emerged fol­low­ing the move by Gas­pard to drop cor­rup­tion charges against for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, and at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen in 2022.

Gas­pard told Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle that his de­ci­sion to drop the charges against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen fol­lowed rev­e­la­tions by King’s Coun­sel Vin­cent Nel­son that he was giv­en the in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment in re­turn for a state­ment against the duo.

Nel­son, Gas­pard fur­ther re­vealed, has since filed a claim against the State for breach of the in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment and was not will­ing to tes­ti­fy un­til the mat­ter con­clud­ed.

The move by Gas­pard to drop the charges against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen caught the Gov­ern­ment off-guard, with Ar­mour in­di­cat­ing that he would pur­sue all pos­si­ble av­enues, not lim­it­ed to civ­il pro­ceed­ings, to re­cov­er any pro­ceeds of the crimes al­leged­ly com­mit­ted.

“The DPP re­ject­ed all at­tempts to in­volve his of­fice with the in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment. The DPP re­fused to as­so­ciate him­self or prof­fer ad­vice and in­sist­ed that the mat­ter did not fall un­der his purview. The DPP’s straight­for­ward ap­proach was con­sid­ered un­wel­com­ing,” ac­cord­ing to se­nior le­gal sources.

The de­ci­sion by Gas­pard to with­draw the decades-old cor­rup­tion charges against for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, his wife Oma, for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Car­los John and busi­ness­man Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh was an­oth­er up­set for the Gov­ern­ment, sources added.

“The de­ci­sion to drop charges is en­tire­ly at the dis­cre­tion of the DPP. Po­lit­i­cal pres­sure and or in­ter­fer­ence can­not be al­lowed to in­flu­ence mat­ters. The im­broglio is un­war­rant­ed. It does not au­gur well to have three of the coun­try’s high­est of­fice­hold­ers at­tack­ing the DPP in pub­lic, “ the se­nior le­gal source said.