Dr Win­ford James

So King’s Coun­sel Vin­cent Nel­son, who agreed in 2019 to be a wit­ness in the State’s crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of for­mer UNC At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and for­mer UNC sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen, has now re­fused to go ahead with co­op­er­at­ing with the State un­til his claim against the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al for breach of an in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment has been heard and de­ter­mined.

And the case has been stalled by Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard, ap­par­ent­ly be­cause, apart from Nel­son’s un­co­op­er­a­tive­ness, it would be un­fair to let it hold strain in­def­i­nite­ly pend­ing the out­come of the claim.

The case of the State–as dis­tinct from the Gov­ern­ment for, as PM Row­ley re­mind­ed us, his Gov­ern­ment does not get in­volved in pros­e­cu­tions–is that Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen re­ceived (not in­signif­i­cant) kick­backs from Nel­son as a re­ward for the lat­ter be­ing giv­en (high­ly lu­cra­tive) briefs from the State. Fur­ther, Nel­son plead­ed guilty be­fore a high court judge for his role in the arrange­ment and was in fact or­dered to pay the State 2.25 mil­lion.

And now the case has been dis­con­tin­ued by Gas­pard and may have ir­re­triev­ably crashed.

The case was cre­at­ed dur­ing Dr Row­ley’s first ad­min­is­tra­tion and was politi­cised then by him, his At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, and his oth­er po­lit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tors, but es­pe­cial­ly in the cam­paign in the last par­lia­men­tary elec­tions.

The PNM took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to poung–or, you pre­fer, lam­baste–the UNC for wide­spread cor­rup­tion and mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice. They poung–is it okay to say ‘pounged’ or pound­ed’?–the UNC up and down the coun­try, and they promised, as they had in the 2015 cam­paign, to urge the rel­e­vant arms of the State to gath­er the da­ta, take the cul­prits to court, and win con­vic­tions that would land them in jail. They were care­ful to warn their par­lia­men­tar­i­ans and min­is­ters to steer clear of cor­rup­tion in both their pub­lic and pri­vate func­tions.

In­deed, the PM could tell us last Wednes­day in Diego Mar­tin West that he would be the most sur­prised per­son [if any of his peo­ple were in­volved in such slack­ness], and that, ‘as of now’, he knew of no sit­u­a­tion ‘where any mon­ey paid to any lawyer in any le­gal mat­ter end­ed up in the pock­et of any mem­ber of the Gov­ern­ment which I lead.’ En pas­sant, note the reprise of the kick­backs charge in the state­ment.

The PNM won both elec­tions, but, giv­en oth­er more time-ho­n­oured can­di­dates, it is an open ques­tion whether their an­ti-cor­rup­tion plat­form played a crit­i­cal role.

We must ask a num­ber of ques­tions at this point. Will Nel­son change his mind again and, ac­cord­ing­ly, will the case be re­vived and con­clud­ed in the State’s favour be­fore the next elec­tions? How will the Gov­ern­ment deal with the ob­ser­va­tion of Mar­tin Daly, SC that ‘those deal­ings with Nel­son and his crew were not any busi­ness of the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, which Min­istry Al-Rawi held at the time? Deal­ing with Nel­son be­com­ing a wit­ness for the State was and is the ex­clu­sive busi­ness of the DPP’? If no cor­rup­tion-based con­vic­tions are achieved against the UNC be­fore those elec­tions, will the PNM be bold enough to come back again with an an­ti-cor­rup­tion cam­paign against the UNC?

In re­sponse to the last ques­tion, it ap­pears they will if Dr Row­ley’s speech at the 49th An­nu­al Con­fer­ence of the Diego Mar­tin West con­stituen­cy is any­thing to go by. Be­low are pieces of that speech:

‘There’s noth­ing that the Op­po­si­tion Leader can do and will do that can shake the re­solve of the PNM Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go as we res­olute­ly go af­ter those who have com­mit­ted crimes, white-col­lar crimes, in this coun­try.’

‘I want to de­clare here tonight, as we pur­su­ing white-col­lar crime, the price at the end is not the mat­ter. Is whether we find the cul­prits and put them where they be­long.’ Every dol­lar we say we spend on le­gal fees, we could tell you what the mon­ey was spent for. All of a sud­den those who dis­tressed us in the worse pos­si­ble way be­hav­ing as though shame doesn’t ex­ist… .’

What­ev­er moral cred­i­bil­i­ty the PNM still have in this mat­ter, their po­lit­i­cal cred­i­bil­i­ty in man­ag­ing their cor­rup­tion agen­da against the UNC is at stake here.