Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior lead le­gal coun­sel for the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the deaths of four divers at a Paria Trad­ing Com­pa­ny site in Feb­ru­ary, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, has de­fend­ed the im­par­tial­i­ty and ob­jec­tive­ness of the com­mis­sion, which will be chaired by Jus­tice Den­nis Mor­ri­son and in­clude sub­sea spe­cial­ist Gre­go­ry Wil­son.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj dis­pelled what he la­belled as “mis­con­cep­tions” that have been linked with the CoE, in­clud­ing its in­de­pen­dence.

“This com­mis­sion is head­ed by a very dis­tin­guished judge. So we are talk­ing about a dis­tin­guished judge. Would any­one re­al­ly rea­son­ably be­lieve that this com­mis­sion would not be in­de­pen­dent and im­par­tial?” Ma­haraj asked.

The com­mis­sion­ers re­ceived their in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment yes­ter­day. The Gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed to go with a CoE af­ter crit­i­cisms about the ob­jec­tiv­i­ty and fair­ness of a pre­vi­ous five-mem­ber com­mit­tee tasked with in­ves­ti­gat­ing the in­ci­dent.

In out­lin­ing the pro­fes­sion­al cre­den­tials of Jus­tice Mor­ri­son yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj said his work could not be ques­tioned.

Ma­haraj al­so as­sured that he him­self was com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing the en­quiry was con­duct­ed fair­ly.

“I would do every­thing with­in my pow­er to get all the rel­e­vant ev­i­dence to be pre­sent­ed to the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry and as coun­sel to the com­mis­sion, I would dis­charge those du­ties in­de­pen­dent­ly and im­par­tial­ly,” Ma­haraj said.

Ma­haraj, Jus­tice Mor­ri­son and Wil­son al­so de­nied any pre­vi­ous po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tions or links with Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed when ques­tioned about their in­de­pen­dence.

“I am not in­volved in any pol­i­tics. I am do­ing this on be­half of the state of Trinidad and To­ba­go. I took this ap­point­ment be­cause I be­lieve I have a du­ty to as­sist the state and the state is to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent to any po­lit­i­cal par­ty. The peo­ple con­sti­tute the state in ef­fect, so, there­fore, in my view, I am act­ing on be­half of the state. I am ba­si­cal­ly like the lawyer for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go in this en­quiry.”

Jus­tice Mor­ri­son said he too had no con­nec­tions or af­fil­i­a­tions with the Gov­ern­ment.

“I can say that I have no con­nec­tion with Paria. I have no con­nec­tion with the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, safe to the ex­tent that I have been asked to do this. As far as I am aware, I come to this ex­er­cise with a com­plete­ly open mind.”

Sub­sea spe­cial­ist Wil­son al­so main­tained he too was not con­nect­ed with any po­lit­i­cal par­ties.

“I am not af­fil­i­at­ed with any po­lit­i­cal par­ty. I’m not af­fil­i­at­ed with Paria or any state agency in any form. My in­ter­est in this is to bring an an­swer to the fam­i­lies, of course, and to the na­tion, so, no af­fil­i­a­tion.”

Ma­haraj went on to add that “the fact that the Gov­ern­ment is pro­vid­ing re­sources to the com­mis­sion for it to func­tion does not mean that the com­mis­sion is a tool in the hands of the Gov­ern­ment be­cause the com­mis­sion­ers are in­de­pen­dent and im­par­tial, com­plete­ly de­tached from the pol­i­tics. They are, in ef­fect, judges.”

Jus­tice Moris­son al­so ex­plained that it was not the first time he was chair­ing a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry and in­sist­ed he was not in un­fa­mil­iar ter­ri­to­ry, al­though the cir­cum­stances this time were unique.

“I have a lit­tle ex­pe­ri­ence but every­thing, of course, is new and I would have to say I have cer­tain­ly nev­er been in­volved in a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry hav­ing to do with the loss of life at sea of com­mer­cial divers.”

He said that in the con­duct of the en­quiry, the com­mis­sion will be “com­plete­ly in­su­lat­ed” from the Gov­ern­ment.

Mean­while, the chair­man of the com­mis­sion al­so called for pa­tience from the pub­lic, as no clear date has yet been es­tab­lished for the start of the en­quiry in­to the tragedy.

As mem­bers of the pub­lic are forced to wait longer for an­swers, Jus­tice Mor­ri­son as­sured that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion will be thor­ough and im­par­tial. Jus­tice Mor­ri­son ex­plained that the process to un­earth the facts about the dark day is yet to be trig­gered.

“There are a num­ber of steps to be tak­en be­fore the ac­tu­al pub­lic hear­ing and while we would love to be in a po­si­tion to say that it will be­gin at such and such a date, it will be quite ir­re­spon­si­ble for us to do that yet.”

Jus­tice Mor­ri­son plead­ed for calm, say­ing all ef­forts will be made to com­ply with the terms of ref­er­ence of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“We know that the ques­tion of how long all of this will take is prob­a­bly up­per­most in every­one’s minds. How­ev­er, we as­sure that as you will ap­pre­ci­ate, this is not a process to be rushed at the ex­pense of a prop­er en­quiry.”

Jus­tice Mor­ri­son said he was hope­ful that pro­ce­dur­al hear­ings in­to the mat­ter, which are ex­pect­ed to be held at the up­per floor of the old of­fice of the at­tor­ney gen­er­al, will be­gin in Au­gust.

The chair­man of the en­quiry al­so sought to ad­dress con­cerns that key ev­i­dence in the case could be com­pro­mised as time ticked by.

“We will weigh it all in the bal­ance in com­ing to a de­ci­sion, so we will be live to it, I think three months is not long, in fact, as it may seem to the fam­i­lies and oth­ers in­ter­est­ed in the very na­ture of things.”

The com­mis­sion­ers are ex­pect­ed to sub­mit their find­ings and re­port on the tragedy to the Pres­i­dent with­in six months from the date of com­mence­ment.

Fyzal Kur­ban, Rishi Nages­sar, Kaz­im Ali Jr and Yusuff Hen­ry, em­ploy­ees of LM­CS, were trapped in a pipeline fol­low­ing an ac­ci­dent on Feb­ru­ary 25 and all four men died. An­oth­er mem­ber of the crew, Christo­pher Boodram, sur­vived.

The in­ci­dent sparked wide­spread calls for a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion and for peo­ple to be held ac­count­able.