NO sooner had the Mirror declared Attorney General Anand Ramlogan our ‘Loser of the Year’ 2011, than the AG has begun 2012 with a giant misstep that after only a week must raise questions as to whether he has the maturity for the job.
While it may have appeared a bit untidy given that the AG himself is responsible for making recommendations for the award of silk, there would not have been much of a brouhaha over his being conferred silk on his own, given that there is significant precedent for attorneys general to be so awarded while in office.
Eminent counsel, former Attorney General and former Head of the Law Association, Karl Hudson-Phillips has also advanced a reasonable case that given that attorneys general are recognised as titular head of the bar, it is appropriate for them to be awarded silk on taking office.
The incumbent attorney general came to that office with a well-regarded legal practice and would therefore have had a valid claim for the conferral. He could have even argued, although not as convincingly, that the Prime Minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who served twice as Attorney General in one administration, during which she was also Minister of Legal Affairs, was being awarded out of recognition for that service.
But, as has become the wont under this administration, the Government sought to cover up what was always going to be an untidy self-appointment with the extravagance of including for cover, the Chief Justice, as well as a sitting Court of Appeal judge in Wendel Kangaloo.
In appointments which clearly seemed to have been dictated by politics rather than law, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, the deputy chairman of the Congress of the People, and the former leader of the Tobago National Alliance for Reconstruction were all thrown in to secure the support of every possible political constituency. This is not to question the legal eminence of any of these gentlemen, who would now have the long overdue recognition for their contribution to the law tarnished by the unseemly manner of its conferral.
And just to add to what was clearly extremely political calculation, the announcement was made in the festive short week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, on the eve of the Prime Minister’s departure on her two-week Indian tour. Still, it has all backfired spectacularly.
It is unfortunate that the cynically political manipulation of what is considered a significant honour for members of the legal fraternity has, in fact, been so clumsily executed that it has undermined the value of the award to those genuinely deserving attorneys who were among the 16 named last week Friday.
In a profession so consumed by notions of class, hierarchy and protocol, the elevation to Senior Counsel or silk is a virtual obsession. The stalking of the award means that attorneys jealously examine the awardees and their qualifications, so that even the most eminently qualified would be subject to unflattering scrutiny from the disappointed. When, however, the howls of protest arise from the appointed legal luminaries like Hudson-Phillips, Martin Daly, and Michael de la Bastide, as well as the disappointed aspirants, one can be sure that the Government has got it wrong.
The sheer gaucheness of the most recent awards has created an unprecedented uproar that can only be quelled by a demonstration of some recognition that an error has been made. It could begin with an admission by the Chief Justice and his colleague, Justice of Appeal Wendell Kangaloo, that the receipt of this award is untenable and their announcement of its immediate renunciation. There also needs to be a concession by the AG, the Judiciary and the Law Association that no further awards are made until a transparent and independent system is implemented to ensure no such abuse ever occurs again.
Such a review should also consider whether the award of silk itself, a colonial anachronism, should be abolished.
