Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly yes­ter­day ac­cused At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour of hid­ing be­hind the sub ju­dice rule to avoid hav­ing to ad­dress the on­go­ing Vin­cent Nel­son in­dem­ni­ty fi­as­co.

“What be­fore the courts is mak­ing this sub ju­dice?” Ram­bal­ly asked as he waved an on­line T&T Guardian ar­ti­cle at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion Leader in Port-of-Spain.

The ar­ti­cle was head­lined, “AG Ar­mour de­clines LATT dis­clo­sure re­quest.” Post­ed on­line just a cou­ple of hours be­fore the me­dia con­fer­ence, it stat­ed that Ar­mour had de­clined a re­quest from the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T or dis­clo­sure in re­la­tion to the col­lapse of the cor­rup­tion case against for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen.

Ram­bal­ly want­ed Ar­mour to know that this “self-in­flict­ed vow of si­lence,” un­der what he de­scribed as a false ap­pli­ca­tion of the sub ju­dice prin­ci­ple, will not be ac­cept­ed by the pub­lic.

“Mr At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, stop mis­rep­re­sent­ing the state of af­fairs, stop mis­rep­re­sent­ing what is your role, stop mis­rep­re­sent­ing what is the prop­er ap­pli­ca­tion of le­gal prin­ci­ples, you are not bound by any sub ju­dice prin­ci­ples,” he said.

Sub ju­dice means that a mat­ter is still be­fore the court and con­ver­sa­tions around it must be lim­it­ed be­cause it can prej­u­dice the case and put a fair tri­al at risk.

Ar­mour de­fend­ed his de­ci­sion to the LATT by say­ing his of­fice was cur­rent­ly de­fend­ing a law­suit from Nel­son over the al­leged breach of an in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment be­tween him (Nel­son) and for­mer AG Faris Al-Rawi.

How­ev­er, Ram­bal­ly said the crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen have been dropped by the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and what is now be­fore the court is a civ­il mat­ter.

“I re­peat, in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, so you tell me what is be­fore the courts? There are no crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings be­fore the courts, that is num­ber one and even if you want to stretch be­yond the lim­its of elas­tic­i­ty that this sub ju­dice rule can ap­ply in the civ­il mat­ter that you are talk­ing about, you tell me what is in the pub­lic do­main that is now go­ing to be a dis­cus­sion on the mer­it of the mat­ter.”

Ram­bal­ly said the pub­lic will not let Ar­mour get away with what he de­scribed as con­duct un­be­com­ing of an AG. He al­so called on the Prime Min­is­ter to break his si­lence on the mat­ter.

“Why are we not hear­ing from them?” Ram­bal­ly asked, Is it that they are busy in To­ba­go par­ty­ing for the whole week be­cause it was the Prime Min­is­ter’s birth­day?”

Ram­bal­ly al­so ques­tioned why the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice has not yet in­ves­ti­gat­ed Al-Rawi and oth­er Cab­i­net mem­bers for what he called an in­duce­ment for Nel­son to plead guilty.

“Mr Ja­cob (Mc­Don­ald), is it that you do not want to jeop­ar­dise your chances of be­ing ap­point­ed the next Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, is that how the TTPS is now be­ing run?”