Trinidad Express
Tobago News
Trinidad Guardian
Ramesh's dubious position
February 7, 2001
By Denis Solomon
THE ambiguous position of Attorney General Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj in the matter of the Constitutional motions of Winston "Gypsy" Peters and William Chaitan has more than once been the subject of comment in the media.
Ramesh, as an elected representative of the United National Congress, has a strong political interest in Peters and Chaitan winning their cases against the State and remaining in Parliament, all the more because losing them would mean that Ramesh himself would be out of office along with the UNC government.
As Attorney General, however, Ramesh is the nominal defendant in any case against the State, and it is his duty to defend any such actions to the best of his ability.
His inclination to do so, however, was brought into question in the Evelyn Ann Peterson Constitutional motion, in which he immediately conceded the case to Peterson, without consulting the real defendant, namely the Chief Justice, with whom he was known to be at daggers drawn.
It is admittedly not easy to maintain impartiality in such circumstances, let alone the appearance of impartiality. Ramesh should therefore have welcomed the chance to stay out of the representation petitions of Franklin Khan and Farad Khan against Gypsy and Chaitan, since the State is not involved in them at all. Instead, he tried to inject himself into them even at the application stage, on the pretext of "assisting the court".
An application for leave to bring an election petition (known as a "representation petition") is heard "ex parte". This means that the other parties are not represented. In fact there are no other parties, since by definition the action has not yet been brought, and, if the application is denied, will not be.
Fenton Ramsahoye SC, the attorney for Gypsy and Chaitan, also asked to be allowed "to assist the court". It is worth remembering that Ramsahoye was the attorney who conceded the Peterson motion on behalf of Ramesh.
In the event, the judge pointed out that the court needed no assistance and had asked for none. But as a courtesy he agreed to the request, and gave Ramesh's attorney and Ramsahoye one hour to prepare their submissions. Both declined.
In the Gypsy and Chaitan Constitutional motions Ramesh has, of course, to be involved, because as AG he is the official defendant. In my Sunday Express column of December 31 I pointed out the possibility of his dealing with these motions as he had dealt with that of Peterson. In the event he did not (or hasn't yet). But his attorney, the expensive English QC James Guthrie, has been representing the State, on Ramesh's behalf, in a decidedly odd way.
One aspect of his conduct of the case evoked from one of the counsel for the Khans the comment that it was the first time an Attorney General appeared to be supporting a counterclaim against himself.
Peters' and Chaitan's counsel, Fenton Ramsahoye SC, and Allan Alexander SC, counsel for defeated candidates Franklin Khan and Farad Khan, had agreed at the start of the trial that a document in which Chaitan had applied to renounce Canadian citizenship could be put in evidence. Alexander's interest was that it saved him having to prove that Chaitan was in fact a Canadian citizen at the material times.
Counsel for the Khans, however, withdrew their consent to the admission of the document when the argument was raised that it was sufficient to Chaitan's case if he could be shown to have done all in his power to renounce his foreign citizenship. This was not part of Chaitan's case, and was not the purpose for which the document was in evidence. The judge agreed.
The surprising thing about this submission was that it was made, not by Ramsahoye, but by Guthrie, the man hired at great expense to the taxpayer to rebut Chaitan's and Peters' arguments, not to support them. Hence the judge's surprise and the remark of Reginald Armour, Alexander's junior, about the Attorney General backing a claim against himself.
It was also Guthrie who, earlier in the proceedings, had argued that election day, not nomination day, was the moment at which a candidate had to be free of foreign allegiances. If true, this would be of great assistance to Chaitan's case, since he claims to have completed the renunciation process between nomination day and election day.
Furthermore, as a leading legal figure in the UNC hierarchy, Ramesh may well have been instrumental in the two candidates' decision to bring Constitutional motions in the first place. He is known to have met with the Prime Minister to discuss the party's legal strategy in the face of the PNM challenge to the election results. Moreover, once Constitutional motions are brought, they have the effect of delaying the representation petitions indefinitely.
Now the "interpretation summonses" of defeated UNC election candidates Roy Augustus and Roodlal Moonilal are coming up for hearing in the High Court. The petitioners are asking the court to rule that they are qualified to be appointed to the Senate and that the President of the Republic should so appoint them.
An interpretation summons is not only a relatively new event in the jurisprudence of Trinidad and Tobago, but in this particular one the conflicts of interest are even more tangled. The Attorney General represents the State.
But this time Ramesh has a strong political interest even as Attorney General. For it is as Attorney General, not as Ramesh, that he has been arguing with the President of the Republic over precisely the same issue, bombarding the President with legal opinions and threatening unspecified legislative action against him if he does not give in. He has delivered these utterances from the Attorney General's chambers, standing before a banner bearing the legend "Ministry of the Attorney General".
It is difficult for a layman to understand who is "summoned" by an interpretation summons, and why the Attorney General is involved in it at all.
He can only be representing the State. But the President is also one of the parties, and he is Head of State. This is puzzling enough, since the Constitution says no decision of the President can be challenged in court.
But if the President is a party, how can Ramesh represent the State separately from its Head?
Ramesh's presence would certainly seem to suggest that he is trying to make the court, if not a weapon in the fight against the President, at least part of the arena of that fight.
Here too we have the same cast of characters: Guthrie for the Attorney General and Ramsahoye for Augustus. And this time it will be even more difficult, for this layman at least, to figure out whether Guthrie and Ramsahoye are on the same or opposite sides.
Copyright © 2004 Denis Solomon