Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard, SC, would have stunned cit­i­zens yes­ter­day when he dis­con­tin­ued the pros­e­cu­tion of for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, his wife Oma, for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Car­los John and busi­ness­man Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh on cor­rup­tion charges re­lat­ed to the con­struc­tion of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

The de­ci­sion, an­nounced be­fore Mag­is­trate Adia Mo­hammed, would have sur­prised many giv­en the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of this case and three oth­er mat­ters re­lat­ed to cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions swirling around the pro­cure­ment of con­tracts for the con­struc­tion of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port dat­ing back to ear­ly 2000s.

Nat­u­ral­ly, law-abid­ing cit­i­zens would be dis­heart­ened to see once again that gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials named in al­leged cor­rupt prac­tices with oth­er par­ties dur­ing their tenures in of­fice are not be­ing called to ac­count for their al­leged ac­tions, if in­deed the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and the Of­fice of the DPP had strong cas­es against them.

More sig­nif­i­cant­ly, how­ev­er, is DPP Gas­pard’s ad­mit­tance that once again, the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion had more to do with the length of time the case wind­ed it­self through the court. Crit­i­cal­ly, DPP Gas­pard not­ed that at this stage, his of­fice would have a minute chance of se­cur­ing con­vic­tions due in part to the fact that key wit­ness­es are no longer avail­able due to death or mi­gra­tion and, more im­por­tant­ly, that the ac­cused would have a fair chance of con­vinc­ing the court that they were prej­u­diced in the case.

For the record, four sep­a­rate cas­es were ini­ti­at­ed against a group of in­di­vid­u­als fol­low­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by Cana­di­an foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tor Robert Lindquist in­to the Pi­ar­co project.

In this par­tic­u­lar case, re­ferred to as Pi­ar­co Three, the Pan­days were charged in 2005 with cor­rupt­ly re­ceiv­ing £25,000; while Mr John and Mr Gal­barans­ingh were charged with cor­rupt­ly giv­ing £25,000 to the cou­ple as an in­duce­ment or re­ward in re­la­tion to the Pi­ar­co Air­port ex­pan­sion project.

Yet, there were sig­nals even be­fore yes­ter­day that the case was doomed to fail­ure as the ac­cused chal­lenged as­pects at the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry stages.

Hav­ing said that, this par­tic­u­lar mat­ter once again ex­pos­es the fall­out of the slow pace of T&T’s ju­di­cial sys­tem. Not for the first time, a case which cost tax­pay­ers mil­lions would have come to nought not on­ly due to the in­com­pe­tence of var­i­ous arms of the state re­spon­si­ble for the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the case but for pros­e­cut­ing the mat­ter through the courts and the slow man­ner in which jus­tice is served in T&T. In fact, apart from DPP Gas­pard’s rea­son­ing for the dis­con­tin­u­ance, it is al­so like­ly to have been im­pact­ed by key wit­ness­es’ mem­o­ry of what tran­spired al­most two decades ago.

How­ev­er, most dis­con­cert­ing to cit­i­zens would have been that this case has again firmed up the con­tin­u­ing and grow­ing view that jus­tice is dis­pensed dif­fer­ent­ly for the haves and the have-nots in this so­ci­ety.

With the more re­cent dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of the cor­rup­tion kick­back case in­volv­ing for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and for­mer UNC sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen last Oc­to­ber fresh in the cit­i­zen­ry’s mem­o­ry, how­ev­er, it con­tin­ues to be a sad re­flec­tion on T&T’s ju­di­cial sys­tem that cas­es crit­i­cal to the coun­try’s his­to­ry fall apart and re­main stains with­in the an­nals of law and or­der.