Commentary: Something is rotten in the chambers of the Trinidad and Tobago judiciary!
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| Published on Saturday, March 24, 2007 |
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I am acutely aware of the unhinged glee some of my pathologically-begrudging readers experience when they have just cause to make me eat my words. Therefore, I was not at all surprised this week when my INBOX was littered with emails demanding that I open wide and swallow the news that former Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Basdeo Panday had won the appeal of his conviction for laundering ill-gotten gains through a London bank.
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Anthony L. Hall is a descendant
of the Turks & Caicos Islands,
international lawyer and political
consultant - headquartered in
Washington DC - who publishes
his own weblog, The iPINIONS
Journal, at http://ipjn.com
offering commentaries on
current events from a
Caribbean perspective.
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Never mind that, unlike far too many columnists, I have clearly demonstrated my willingness to eat my words on the occasions when it was warranted (as was the case, for example, when I wrote an Op Ed here entitled Final verdict on Diana’s death: I was wrong). But I am constrained to inform my conflicted readers that Panday’s win is no cause for gloating at my expense. And here’s why:
I lauded the exemplary jurisprudence the T & T legal system showed by convicting Panday – despite extreme political duress and alleged attempts by Chief Justice Satnarine Sharma to pervert the course of justice in his case. And nothing in this appellate ruling challenges the legal merit of that conviction. In fact, it merely affirms my recorded fears that one judge (i.e. Sharma) might spoil the whole judiciary.
After all, in a patently specious and untenable ruling, the three members of the Appeals Court squashed Panday’s conviction unanimously. And they rationalized their ruling by declaring that T & T Chief Magistrate Sherman McNicholls’ refusal to testify against Sharma (in his trial on charges of influence peddling in the judiciary) compromised his judicial performance as the presiding magistrate in Panday’s case. Got that? Never mind that McNicholl’s refusal comported with the universally-recognized duty of judges to avoid the very appearance of any conflict that could impugn the integrity and independence of the judiciary.
Meanwhile, given the nature of politics in Trinidad and Tobago these days, there’s probable cause to suspect that this Appellate ruling was the result of political (and perhaps personal) considerations to the same extent as the justices insinuate that McNicholls’ ruling:
“...was the result of political pressure in a move designed to eliminate Panday as a candidate in general elections constitutionally due next year.”
Nevertheless, it follows that if they found “there was a real possibility of bias by McNicholls in the criminal case against Panday”, the justices should have called for McNicholls to be hauled before a disciplinary tribunal to answer for his misconduct. Instead, they chose to bitch-slap him with this craven indictment of his professional judgment, and then dared prosecutors to retry Panday.
Therefore, if this occasion calls for me to eat my words, the words on my plate would be those lauding the exemplary jurisprudence of the T & T judiciary; not those condemning Panday and Sharma.
But frankly, this appellate ruling exposes a tangled web of corruption that is more insidious than even my cynical mind could have imagined; and which constrains me to lament that something is rotten in the chambers of the T & T judiciary!
Related articles:
Final verdict on Diana’s death: I was wrong...
Crisis in Trinidad: Don’t let one judge spoil the whole judiciary |
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