Law Assoc to seek advice on PM’s refusal to act on Archie

THE Law Association intends to seek legal advice on the possibility of reviewing the Prime Minister’s decision not to impeach Chief Justice Ivor Archie.

The association’s vice-president Patricia Dindyal wrote to Dr Rowley on Monday on behalf of its president Douglas Mendes, SC.

The letter was sent by e-mail to the permanent secretary and by hand.

Dindyal said the council was seeking legal advice on whether there were sufficient grounds to support an application for judicial review.

Last week, Rowley provided the advice of Howard Stevens, QC, which he used to guide him on deciding if there were sufficient grounds to invoke Section 137 proceedings to impeach the CJ.

Dindyal said it appeared that Stevens was not sensitive to certain considerations in his opinion.

“It is plain, therefore, that Mr Stevens dismissed lines of enquiry which he clearly appreciated were important because of his judgment that they would not bear any fruit,” the letter to the prime minister said.

“…It is plain that the approach he led you to adopt was simply to assess the quality of the evidence which the association was able to gather and to eschew any further investigation of your own.”

Dindyal added, “Respectfully, Prime Minister, it cannot be that the important responsibility which the Constitution imposes on you under Section 137 to hold the Chief Justice to account, limits you to such a passive role.

“Where serious allegations are made against the Chief Justice by a member of the public, who, like the association, has no power to compel anyone to give evidence, surely it is incumbent on you to engage in some level of enquiry of your own, such as your office would permit.

“Indeed, in relation to one of the other complaints, Mr Stevens advised that although it was not for you to attempt to resolve any conflicting evidence, ‘it would be open to (you) to seek clarification’ the prime minister was told.

On Sunday, Rowley told constituents in Diego Martin that elements of the Opposition UNC were trying to get him to advise the President to appoint a tribunal to investigate the Chief Justice because it was trying to get its election petition rulings overturned.

As he defended his decision not to invoke Section 137, Rowley said he did not work for the association and was fully aware of his constitutional role. He also said he sought advice from an independent Queen’s Counsel so that no one could accuse him of impropriety.

Responding to his comments, Senior Counsel Israel Khan, whom Rowley also mentioned, chastised the PM’s accusations of “political mischief, bias and having a hidden political agenda in its desire to remove the Chief Justice from office.”

Khan also took issue with the Prime Minister’s criticisms of the Judiciary as it related to the crime problem.

Rowley said sometimes, members of the Judiciary give the impression they do not know what is going on in TT “because people appear before them, and all of a sudden they become the bleeding heart for the criminals.”

Khan said the PM’s attack was nothing but a poor excuse for his inept leadership against criminal elements.

He called on the legal profession to protect the Judiciary from “his plots and schemes in throwing blame on everybody but himself for allowing TT to become the most dangerous country in the world.”