The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is re­spon­si­ble for the ad­min­is­tra­tion of le­gal af­fairs in T&T and le­gal pro­ceed­ings for and against the State. Giv­en the ex­ten­sive pow­ers of the of­fice and to guard against the pos­si­bil­i­ty that those pow­ers could be abused for po­lit­i­cal ob­jec­tives, the Re­pub­li­can Con­sti­tu­tion es­tab­lished the po­si­tion of Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions. This has cre­at­ed ten­sion, if not fric­tion, be­tween the two of­fices, which has some­times erupt­ed in­to pub­lic view, as in the re­cent past.

The Con­sti­tu­tion recog­nis­es cer­tain rights and free­doms that of­fice­hold­ers are du­ty-bound to up­hold. The law has evolved by de­ter­min­ing the rights of the in­di­vid­ual in con­trast to the over­ween­ing pow­er of the State, es­pe­cial­ly as ex­er­cised by its var­i­ous arms, in­clud­ing the po­lice ser­vice. The Ju­di­cia­ry is meant to be an in­de­pen­dent ar­biter to ad­ju­di­cate on the bound­aries be­tween the State and cit­i­zens. This is why jus­tice is said to be blind so that it can ad­ju­di­cate fair­ly with­out in­flu­ence. In this con­text, the AG’s role is a pow­er­ful one, as it is pre­sumed to bring a mea­sure of ra­tio­nal­i­ty and bal­ance.

There have been in­stances where of­fice­hold­ers have in­ter­fered in ar­eas where they should not be in­volved. AGs of both par­ties have been guilty of these ex­cess­es, in­volv­ing them­selves in le­gal ac­tions of state en­ter­pris­es to pur­sue po­lit­i­cal ob­jec­tives.

Un­like his re­cent pre­de­ces­sors, the in­cum­bent AG came to of­fice as an ex­pe­ri­enced se­nior coun­sel and a for­mer pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion who would have been in­volved in sev­er­al mat­ters per­tain­ing to the role of the State.

In of­fice, the AG has not demon­strat­ed that he tran­si­tioned from pri­vate prac­tice em­pha­sis on “win­ning” to the ac­cep­tance of the wider re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of pub­lic of­fice. His fail­ure to de­fend a ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion case against the State was blamed on a “miss­ing file.” Like the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, he could not dis­tin­guish the ac­cep­tance of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in its widest sense and sought to avoid “blame”.

Then a US Ap­peal Court judge dis­qual­i­fied the AG from rep­re­sent­ing the GORTT in pur­su­ing a cor­rup­tion case in which he had “act­ed” for the de­fen­dant, an ap­palling loss of mem­o­ry made worse by the con­tra­dic­to­ry ex­pla­na­tions.

The re­cent Brent Thomas mat­ter rais­es ever greater alarm. The Bar­ba­dos gov­ern­ment, through its at­tor­ney gen­er­al, has con­ced­ed that it wrong­ful­ly im­pris­oned Mr Thomas, there­by vi­o­lat­ing his rights—an im­pris­on­ment that a T&T judge la­belled an ab­duc­tion. His de­ten­tion in Bar­ba­dos was caused by an ap­proach from un­named T&T au­thor­i­ties. No sov­er­eign state would be moved to such ac­tion by low­er-lev­el func­tionar­ies in an­oth­er state.

The AG has in­di­cat­ed that he will ap­peal the mat­ter in T&T, ar­gu­ing that the fail­ure of the Bar­ba­dos au­thor­i­ties can­not give rise to a con­sti­tu­tion­al claim for the breach of Brent Thomas' fun­da­men­tal rights un­der the T&T Con­sti­tu­tion. The Ap­peal Court will de­ter­mine this mat­ter.

This case rais­es cer­tain is­sues, like the mat­ters now be­ing laid bare in the in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the go­ings-on at the SSA. In ad­di­tion to the in­sti­tu­tion­al malaise at the SSA, many oth­er mat­ters have been raised con­cern­ing the ac­tions of mem­bers of the TTPS, which sug­gest abuse of pow­er, if not the use of ex­tra­ju­di­cial pow­er. Are we wit­ness­ing the de­scent in­to chaos as agents of or­der lose their com­mit­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion­al process­es and pro­ce­dures they are sup­posed to up­hold?