Derek Achong

Dr Avinash Sawh has lost a bid to chal­lenge the de­ci­sion of the Med­ical Board of T&T to not make a mem­ber of the tri­bunal, in­ves­ti­gat­ing al­leged racist re­marks made by him, re­cuse her­self be­cause her hus­band is a vet­er­an African rights and Black Pow­er Move­ment ac­tivist. 

In an oral de­ci­sion at the end of an emer­gency vir­tu­al hear­ing yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad re­ject­ed an in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion by Dr Sawh’s le­gal team to stop the work of the dis­ci­pli­nary tri­bunal pend­ing de­ter­mi­na­tion of a law­suit over the re­ject­ed re­cusal move. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so de­nied Sawh leave to pur­sue the ju­di­cial re­view law­suit, as he said it was de­void of mer­it, friv­o­lous and vex­a­tious. 

“There is noth­ing to con­vince this court that this case has a rea­son­able prospect of suc­cess,” he said. 

“It (the ap­pli­ca­tion) was not on­ly di­vi­sive but de­struc­tive,” Seep­er­sad said, as he crit­i­cised Sawh’s le­gal team for seek­ing to have the ap­pli­ca­tion heard as an emer­gency dur­ing the week­end. 

Sawh came un­der pub­lic scruti­ny late last year af­ter a voice record­ing of an al­leged con­ver­sa­tion be­tween him and an em­ploy­ee was shared on so­cial me­dia. In the con­ver­sa­tion, Sawh re­ferred to po­lice­men as “dunce n---ers” and Afro-Trinida­di­ans as “mon­keys”. 

Fol­low­ing the back­lash, Sawh pub­licly apol­o­gised to the woman and mem­bers of the pub­lic who were of­fend­ed by his com­ments.

The Med­ical Board wrote to Sawh and in­formed him that sev­er­al com­plaints had been made against him, but failed to in­clude the orig­i­nal com­plaint forms as re­quired.
The board with­drew its ini­tial cor­re­spon­dence and on Feb­ru­ary 10, de­cid­ed to hold an in­quiry in­to the al­le­ga­tions that Sawh was guilty of two charges of “in­fa­mous and dis­grace­ful” con­duct. 

On Au­gust 24, Sawh’s lawyers wrote to the board call­ing for the re­cusal of a vet­er­an at­tor­ney on the ba­sis that her hus­band is a promi­nent and lead­ing Afro-cen­tric rights and repa­tri­a­tions ad­vo­cate.
Al­most two weeks lat­er, the Tri­bunal re­ject­ed the ob­jec­tion, lead­ing to the law­suit be­fore Seep­er­sad.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions on be­half of the board, at­tor­ney Ra­jiv Per­sad ac­cept­ed that the at­tor­ney would have had to re­cuse her­self if her hus­band was part of the group that made the com­plaints against Sawh or if he had com­ment­ed on the case in the pub­lic do­main. How­ev­er, he not­ed that nei­ther oc­curred.

Per­sad al­so point­ed out that ex­ten­sive in­for­ma­tion about the ac­tivism back­ground of the at­tor­ney’s hus­band, which was in­clud­ed in the pro­posed law­suit, were not raised with the board when Sawh re­quest­ed the re­cusal and was re­fused. 
Dur­ing the hear­ing, Seep­er­sad point­ed out that the tri­bunal had to con­sid­er whether Sawh’s apol­o­gy was suf­fi­cient and not whether his com­ments were racist. 

“Any right think­ing cit­i­zen liv­ing in this cos­mopoli­tan so­ci­ety such as ours would take def­er­ence to or ob­ject to such com­ments,” Seep­er­sad said. 
“They were in­ap­pro­pri­ate, un­ac­cept­able, have no place in our so­ci­ety and must be re­ject­ed out­right.”

The first hear­ing of the tri­bunal was sched­uled for 2 pm yes­ter­day but had to be post­poned as the ap­pli­ca­tion be­fore Seep­er­sad was heard around 3.30 pm.