Mixed views over Kamla’s refusal to speak on ‘Marlene-gate’

Two at­tor­neys and a po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst have ex­pressed mixed views over Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s de­ci­sion not to speak on the al­le­ga­tions that she alert­ed Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald to the fact that she would have been ar­rest­ed by po­lice.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar told a UNC po­lit­i­cal meet­ing on Wednes­day that the mat­ter was sub ju­dice, as her rea­son for not want­i­ng to speak fur­ther on the mat­ter.

At­tor­ney Mar­tin George, how­ev­er, did not agree with Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s stance.

“If it is that there has been an an­cil­lary mat­ter raised in re­la­tion to the ques­tion of the leak­ing of in­for­ma­tion and per­sons be­ing ei­ther tipped-off or no­ti­fied be­fore­hand, to the best of our knowl­edge as to what is al­ready in the pub­lic do­main there doesn’t ap­pear to be any le­gal mat­ter in the courts or be­fore the crim­i­nal courts in re­la­tion to that, so, one is at pains to un­der­stand how that could be con­sid­ered as sub ju­dice,” George told Guardian Me­dia.

Mean­while at­tor­ney Fa­reed Ali, ex­pressed a dif­fer­ent view.

“It is cor­rect of her in law to sit un­der the um­brel­la or the pro­tec­tive cov­er­ing of sub ju­dice and in­di­cate that I am not com­ment­ing on the ba­sis that it is sub ju­dice be­fore the courts. I think she has found, us­ing her le­gal knowl­edge, a skil­ful way of avoid­ing hav­ing to name her source,” Ali said.

He added it will be in her best po­lit­i­cal in­ter­est not to talk on the mat­ter.

But giv­en the pol­i­tics of the mat­ter, an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James told Guardian Me­dia the sub ju­dice claim does not work in the favour of the Op­po­si­tion Leader.

“The Op­po­si­tion Leader wants to de­vel­op a sense of mys­tery about the is­sue but the is­sue is straight­for­ward, some­body must have told her and the ques­tion is who told her? Hid­ing un­der sub ju­dice doesn’t re­al­ly help her po­si­tion. Come out and say who told you, but no politi­cian would do that,” James said.

Since the is­sue was made pub­lic, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith ad­dressed the mat­ter by say­ing “it is ab­solute­ly im­pos­si­ble that any­one could have made such a state­ment and be ac­cu­rate about it be­cause sev­er­al weeks be­fore there was noth­ing re­mote­ly close to go­ing ahead to con­firm any MP was to be ar­rest­ed.”

Mc­Don­ald told Guardian Me­dia she had “no doubt” in her mind that the Op­po­si­tion Leader was speak­ing the truth and she had no rea­son to doubt her.

On Au­gust 7, an of­fi­cer of the Fraud Squad swooped down on Mc­Don­ald’s St Joseph home and ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant.

Days lat­er Mc­Don­ald, her long-time com­pan­ion Michael Carew and three oth­ers were slapped with 49 fraud and cor­rup­tion charges.

 

Written by:  Chester Sambrano

Fri Sep 20 2019