Criticisms flow over justice system
…after collapse of case against Panday, Oma, John, Galbaransingh
Calls for improvement in this country’s criminal justice system were made by senior attorneys yesterday following Monday’s collapse of the case against former prime minister Basdeo Panday and his wife, Oma Panday, former minister Carlos John and businessman Ishwar Galbaransingh.
Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Roger Gaspard SC filed a notice of discontinuance in the case against the four at the Port of Spain Magistrates’ Court, stating it had to be considered whether there was fair prospect of conviction in the matter. He told the court key witnesses were unavailable, as some had died and there was also one elderly person who lived abroad.
The matter in which the former prime minister and his wife, Oma, were accused of receiving £25,000 from John and Galbaransingh in 1998 as an inducement or reward in relation to the Piarco Airport project, was expected to begin on Monday before Port of Spain Magistrate Adia Mohammed. The charge was laid in 2005.
Speaking with the Express yesterday, in response to the discontinuance, were senior counsel Israel Khan and attorneys Martin George and Prakash Ramadhar.
Khan said Gaspard had the constitutional right to discontinue the matter if he was of the opinion that there was no prospect of obtaining a conviction. He said the DPP would have received witness statements in relation to the charge, and it would have been up to the jury to decide whether or not these witnesses were speaking the truth.
He added, “This matter just remained hanging over the accused heads for all these years. It’s a serious indictment against the criminal justice system, not the DPP, not the accused, but the system itself.”
Slap in the face for taxpayers
Attorney Martin George described the collapse of the case as a slap in the face for the citizens of this country.
He added, “It exposes once again the very weak and soft underbelly of our criminal justice system whereby it seems that there is one law for the rich and powerful and another for the poor and indigent, and this does not engender any sort of confidence, trust or faith from the ordinary citizen in the system of justice in Trinidad and Tobago.”
George said it will appear to the man on the street that if a person is in a certain level of power, prestige or privilege, then the law does not apply to that individual—as opposed to those on the lower end of the socio-economic scale, where they are made to feel the full brunt of the law on a daily basis.
“They are arrested, charged, they are convicted and jailed. So, therefore, clearly you will have serious inequities in a society such as that, and persons are going to feel disenfranchised, disillusioned, and they will feel that they are not being treated the same way as others who are able to afford the trappings of the high life,” he said.
He also lamented the amount of money that would have been spent in the prosecution of the matter. “Once again we are seeing millions, maybe hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars wasted in what has been a futile and useless pursuit, only to end up with the Government and the State of Trinidad and Tobago with egg on its face, and another botched and flopped prosecution, whereby absolutely no useful result has come out of it from the prosecution’s perspective,” he added.
George also said this is “not even the end of the nightmare for the citizens and the taxpayers”, as there is now has the potential for more money being spent on fresh litigation. He said there is “much fertile ground” for a claim of malicious prosecution, and “claims can be now mounted to say that there was a malicious intent in this prosecution and of course this is coloured and flavoured by the political paint which attended these matters”.
George added that while there are challenges of the DPP’s office being understaffed and the Judiciary being under resourced, the responsibility of those in Government and leadership is to find meaningful and workable solutions. “We need to start calling on all our parliamentarians, all our leaders to start working together to get Trinidad and Tobago to a better place as regards to the delivery of criminal justice in this country,” he said.
‘Awful pressure’ for the Pandays
Attorney Ramadhar said he was “quite disappointed in our legal system that allows for cases to drag on for so long a period.”
He added, “We need to make our systems far more efficient to ensure that those against whom charges are brought can have their matters dealt with one way or the other in a speedy manner. So that those who are guilty can be dealt with accordingly, and those who are innocent not to be made to suffer for this long period of time because nothing can give them back their time and their peace of mind that would have been lost.”
Ramadhar congratulated the DPP for the approach he took in dealing with the matter in the interest of justice. He said Panday and his family could be unburdened from this “awful pressure” they’ve been carrying for all these years, and he could only imagine the toll it would have taken on Panday and his family to have the possibility of a trial and jail term hanging over them.
By: Nikita Braxton-Benjamin
