Above the law

THE MINISTRY of National Security is all about maintaining law and order.

Yet it seems the current minister has trouble getting along with his brother lawyers.

Instead of the usual merriment we have come to expect at year's end, Mr Young and the Law Association clashed on Monday over remarks he made on Christmas Day at a police awards ceremony.

Through a combination of innuendo and slick but transparent rhetoric, the minister attacked lawyers who represent people who are purportedly in the country illegally. He feigned concern about the aiding and abetting of criminal activities.

In reply, the association said lawyers work in the public interest and the Cabinet was putting the profession in harm’s way.

’Tis the season.

Mr Young’s astonishment over lawyers getting information from their clients now adds a new layer of ineptitude in relation to the State's handling of the Venezuelan issue. In addition to denying basic rights, it seems the policy is now one of frustrating access to counsel and, therefore, access to court.

If the minister worries about the law, he should start with listening to Justices Avason Quinlan-Williams, Joan Charles, Frank Seepersad (who in ruling, wrongly, for the State nonetheless criticised its “disturbing, shocking and almost barbaric” actions) and the Court of Appeal. All have found wanting aspects of the deportation process that Mr Young oversees.

In the new normal, members of the public have not been allowed to attend these court hearings, but as an interested party it seems the minister has been afforded an opportunity to do so at least once. It has done little to edify his approach. Human traffickers, smugglers – and now nameless lawyers are Mr Young’s bogeymen-at-large.

This not only smears the legal profession as a whole; it raises yet again the spectre of an executive willing to use sensitive government offices to embark on vendettas that have little to do with the public good and more to do with politics.

No court has yet ruled with finality on or been presented with facts as to the status of many Venezuelans before it. So for Mr Young unilaterally to tarnish lawyers who represent “illegals” is an embarrassing act of rash judgment that can only worsen our already faltering international reputation.

It is interesting the State recently watered down the procurement law in a manner that clears the way for it to dole out legal briefs only to lawyers sympathetic to it. The current impasse makes plain the uses to which this free rein is likely to be put.

“Lawyers are not above the law,” Mr Young said on Monday.

Mr Young must take care that it is not he who stands accused of assuming that position.