By Prior Beharry
ONE attorney is taking the Office of the Attorney General to task for saying that a Privy Council decision on Monday “unanimously upheld the management of the Covid-19 pandemic since 2020.”
Five law lords dismissed the appeal by appellants who challenged the Public Health Regulations implemented due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In a comment on Facebook, attorney Kiel Taklalsingh said the Office of the AG release on the ruling that the recent Privy Council decision of Dominic Suraj has “unanimously upheld the management of the Covid-19 pandemic since 2020” or that the Government’s management of Covid 19 has been “conclusively endorsed by the country’s highest court of law” were expressions of political propaganda.
Taklalsingh said the Privy Council did no such thing.
He said, “The attempt to use this judgment to vindicate political decisions (i.e. administrative management of the pandemic) is reckless, unprofessional and unbecoming of that office.”
Taklalsingh said the Privy Council considered and ruled on the constitutionality of specific regulations as they related to public gatherings and public worship.
He said, “It found these specific measures were a proportionate response to the threat of Covid-19. It also settled an important legal debate on the use of proportionality in constitutional challenges.”
Taklalsingh said the Privy Council did not, for instance, consider or decide upon the policy merits of;
(1) The Government’s decision to close businesses for prolonged periods of time thereby causing irreparable harm to the economy;
(2) The measures which locked citizens out of their country and pauperized them in exile; or
(3) Introduce a discriminatory system of education wherein, having discontinued a laptop programme initiated by the former government, it decided to deliver education virtually whereby only children who could afford devices and internet could have accessed education.
He added, “These, if anything, are the true pillars of mismanagement that were at the heart of this Government’s Covid management policy.
“These matters were neither considered nor decided upon by the Privy Council.”
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Taklalsingh said, “The Government and its ministers made a habit of marauding through press conferences attacking and vilifying lawyers and litigants for approaching the courts to vindicate their rights during the pandemic, it is almost comical to read in the very same press release that the AG’s office is of the view that this decision constituted ‘groundbreaking constitutional precedent’.”
He said the judgment has clarified and provided a wealth of understanding with respect to the constitution.
Taklalsingh added it commented on the vagueness of law with respect to some of the guidelines promulgated by the government.
He said the Privy Council stated that the wider aspects of the guidelines were manifestly defective as law and further opined, “nobody would sensibly draft a law in the terms of the guidelines” which was especially relevant in the context where the Hindu Community was denied the right to cremate loved ones because of Ministry of Health guidelines.
The attorney said a single judgment does not vindicate the government’s poor management of the Covid-19 pandemic nor was it a panacea for the other ills which currently plague the office of the Attorney General.
Taklalsingh is on record for wanting a special sitting of the Law Association of Trinidad and Tobago to discuss whether Attorney General Reginald Armour is conflicted for having once represented a former minister in a matter arising out of the construction of the Piarco International Airport. A case based on similar facts is before a civil court in Miami where the T&T Government is the claimant and therefore the matter was brought in the name of the Attorney General. Armour has appealed a decision of a Miami judge to disqualify him from the matter.
