Dear Editor,
When looking at the court rulings handed down in the matter of EMBD v Junior Sammy, it struck me that the government had hired and listed their King’s Counsel since the beginning of the matter in 2018, which signals that they always intended, or at the very least assumed, that this case would end up before the Law Lords of the Privy Council. And it’s interesting because in none of the three matters that have been sent to the Privy Council in my name, have a King’s Council ever formally been brought on to the case prior to the final stage of appeal. Now, the reason that King’s Counsel are usually only hired when the matter is formally lodged with the Privy Council is due to costs, as their fees are considerably more hefty than a regular attorney or even a Senior Counsel.
It, therefore, puts the government’s priorities into perspective, that while they do not see it necessary to hire King’s Counsel during the early stages of Judicial and Constitutional Reviews having to do with the appointment of a Commissioner of Police or the mandate of an election; they will spare absolutely no expense to avoid paying their bills for works completed. Not to mention that the lead local attorney Mr. Colin Kangaloo, who was assigned as a Senior Counsel only last year, would have also increased his fees in the middle of this case, and as such, by the end, there were two King’s Counsel and a Senior Counsel being employed by the State on a matter that had been struck down twice and had absolutely no chance of ever being successfully challenged.
As Dr. Roodal Moonilal rightly pointed out earlier this week, what began as an exercise to recover approximately eighty-two million dollars in outstanding fees owed to Junior Sammy by EMBD may now cost the taxpayers hundreds of millions in legal fees for this matter that has been before the courts for over six years. That said, it is hard to look at the situation as a whole and wonder if that wasn’t the desired outcome from the very beginning. Because absolutely nothing in the ruling handed down by Lords of the Privy Council, as eloquent as it may be, was different to what was decided by Justice Mira Dean-Amorer in March 2020. While commentators in the media have been criticizing the government for this wild goose chase described by the British Law Lords, Justice Dean-Amorer had already ascertained this four years ago when she said:
“the wide berth of documents sought [by the defendant], suggest that the Defendant is on a fishing expedition, hoping for something to turn up.”
So if it was well-known and documented that not only did the government not have any evidence to support their case since the High Court ruling in 2020, why was this matter still appealed by them twice? The only reasonable conclusions that someone might arrive at are either spite or to keep their attorneys employed. And honestly, because both of those explanations fit the M.O. of the government so well, it’s hard to figure out which might be more likely.
Probably the most frustrating aspect of this has to be that, had this unnecessary case not taken place, this project, which was commissioned by Dr. Moonilal, under the Kamla Persad Bissessar-led administration, was not only completed on time but also within budget, which is a rarity in government contracts. But the PNM seem determined to ensure that such a thing never takes place, and as such has now created a scenario where the project now has a cost overrun of tens of millions of dollars in legal fees. As usual, it is the public who are forced to bear the cost of this PNM’s government follies, while at the same time having to suffer because there is no money in the public purse to do any meaningful or beneficial to the national interests.
Best regards,
Ravi Balgobin Maharaj
Mob: +1 868 476-6181
