Ethics in the Legal Profession- My column- April 2011

In Canada last week the profession had to deal with a different kind of ethical risk, but a risk which also emphasises the public duty of the profession. Eric Victor Cojocaru, had suffered brain damage during his birth at a British Columbia hospital. At the end of a 30-day trial of his medical negligence claim, Mr Justice Groves awarded over $5 million in damages. Or did he simply plagiarise his way to the award?

 

 At issue on appeal was whether the judge plagiarised the written submissions of the successful party. To use the more technical description of the question on appeal, the issue was whether the judge "committed an error of law in delivering reasons for judgment that consisted largely of a reproduction, without attribution".

Ethnic talk in Parliament- My column- Sept 2010

Anil Roberts's unsettling and unfunny "Tobago lips" comments seemed out of sync with his Government's multicultural agenda. Days after, occasional Prime Minister Jack Warner topped Roberts with an incredible self-description as the HNIC, an acronym whose "N" stands for the reviled "N word". These are weeds, innocuous weeds being sown, in what over time could get out of control in Kamla Persad-Bissessar's multicultural garden.
Fifteen years after Sumayyah Mohammed's hijab case shone the light on the word "tolerance" among the country's watchwords, Parliament's new breed of jesters seem prepared to use the self-deprecating style of comedy to get their kicks.

Beyond Dookeran's 2010 Budget- My column- September 2010

With the 2010/2011 budget statement delivered, it is communication and not economics which becomes the real challenge for the Minister of Finance.An annual budget statement is what it is and the theme of the latest is that the last Government did a horrible job and this one will do infinitely better. These budget statements are much like a well stocked ten dollar store.


On the surface there is a little something in there for everybody who is interested enough to check it out. Surely, all the details and fine print do not matter at this stage; what matters is that everything is there and there's a bargain to be had. Stripped of the packaging, some of the things may make sense and may actually be of use. Not necessarily long-term use but some use. Others will be no more than beautiful or perhaps clever packaging, enough to bring a smile or fulfill a promise, with little chance of utility. In between, some things will not last the trip from the store. Still, no one returns to complain and no one returns the products. After all, it is what it is.
And therein lies the communication challenge because this budget could be the making of a manifesto.

The SSA/SIA- The buck stops with the PM- My column- Jan 2011

Politicians are human, take my word for it. Their natural tendency is to blame somebody and if that fails then blame somebody else. At first this Government blamed the previous PNM government and in the dodgy world of politics it was fair enough.When that rhetoric had run its course the blame was backhanded to the permanent secretaries and then shifted to Keith Rowley. Now the country's assault on a most irresponsible appointment to the Strategic Services Agency (SSA) is brushed off by the Prime Minister as a red herring served PNM-style. At the tail end the Deputy Director of the SSA is left holding the bag.
If the reports on the short-lived Director of the SSA are to be believed, this is no red herring and this is not the work of the deputy Director of the SSA. In this SSA fiasco the most disturbing fact is that the Prime Minister, as both head of the National Security Council and the Cabinet, failed to exercise sober and mature judgment in the selection and appointment of an "authorised officer" as the recent legislation describes the Director of the SSA.

The AG's statements in Parliament- My column- September 2010

In the movie industry, sequels are well-known. Sequels are rare in calypso, but an opportunity looms for Eric Taylor, once known as Pink Panther, to pen a sequel to his popular "Misprint". Panther could start with "I say Al Rawi and Hinds are my friends", they print "Al Rawi and Hinds in the ten". And there are other cases of misquotes, mistakes and misreads. It is all understandable, because since May 2010, there have been two sides of the Opposition. MPs have treated the Hansard like a tabloid, filling it with all that was wrong with the Manning-led PNM and the Panday-led UNC. In the Upper House, Attorney General Anand Ramlogan has stuck to this script and has regaled that House with the tales of Manning's PNM, now gone. Ramlogan's latest contribution has drawn immense attention, with the online Express version garnering over 400 responses.

Tribute to mommy- Mommy's Magic- My column- January 2011

Dear Mother. Tomorrow you will be 66: a youthful, vibrant and healthy 66. It's funny how the older I get, the older my idea of old gets. When I was 20 I thought a 50-year-old to be a geezer, but now I think of everybody as youthful. I know your grandchildren will disagree with my self-assessment but who cares: I don't hear half the things they say anyway and I don't understand the half I do hear.

Am I really expected to make sense of "OMG like whatever"? Or am I hearing you say "so be it" because you yourself never understood "hardest hard", "fresh", "cork" and "sick", the expressions I may have been clouted for using?

Fazeer Mohammed gone- Who next? My column- Nov 2010

Expect large shipments of "Play Doh", the Government's choice of material, for making State sector bosses and employees like Ken Ali, a man once jailed for defying a court-ordered ban on reporting a news story. Some existing State employees will not survive the barest scans in the rumour mill. For sure, the PNM bar code will be picked up, but other things will make some persons wholly unsuitable for a senior, or any, State job. The obvious defect is their spine, especially one which encases a working spinal cord. In this Politics 2010 version, one must not expect to be able to think independently of the central system, and stand up on your own at the same time. And this is not new, just the updated versions of the politics built for us since 1956. Fazeer gone, who next?

The T&T spy scandal- My column- Nov 2010

When I grew up in Rio Claro, the older people used to talk about shame bush. A  Patrick Manning revival says there is no shame bush in Parliament. A mouse in the House since his election hiding, Patrick the Peeping Tom overestimated the public’s collective dim-wittedness and amnesia; a photo of an incomplete house his way of making the spy scandal disappear.
Tough luck: no revelation by him could draw attention from the scandalous misadventure of using people’s constitutional rights as a footstool for gaining a vantage point to peer into their closets.
In any event, the PM’s improbable $150 million mansion is dwarfed by Manning’s defeat, prior disgrace and legacy of converting the Treasury into a personal slush fund. A growing number of expensive inquiries, commissions and investigations and the billion-dollar CLICO mess all conspire against Patrick.

Who is watching BP?- My column- Oct 2010

Another shuffle, new reporting relationships and a promise to do better. BP insiders will say these announcements are now typical of the oil and gas giant, built out of the former British Petroleum and AMOCO, with no guarantee that these are effective changes. In the US, BP's problems with refinery safety led to 15 deaths at Texas City in 2005.A major investigation, leadership changes and promises to do better followed. Now, with 11 deaths and billions of dollars in loss and damage in the Gulf of Mexico deep-sea drilling operations, there are more promises. T&T's Occupational Safety and Health Authority (OSHA) should be watching bpTT, if only to see if lessons are actually being learnt.

Corporate Governance- Caribbean Airlines- My Column- Dec 2010

Did the Government read the report of the Commission of Enquiry into the construction sector—the Uff Commission? If before a single board was appointed the Government got to page 10 of the 500-page report they would have found the caution: the relationship between Government agencies and ministers needs to be clarified and an express power given to ministers to give instructions, where it is believed that the minister should have that power.The Caribbean Airlines Limited (CAL) dispute will replicate itself across the State sector if the country fails to deal with the Uff Commission report.

Tribute to Norris Deonarine- My column- February 2011

Now Norris Deonarine is gone and the earth has lost some salt. In those hours after he saw his life in the sharpened edge of a three canal gone mad, my friend and one-time neighbour would have worked out that more money had been spent during his interrupted life on studying problems in agriculture than actually solving them.
Much of that money would have been divvied up by regional and non- regional academics, technocrats rammed down national throats by funding agencies and former bureaucrats trading their colonial-era desks for frequent flyer miles, in the name of consultancy. In only rare cases would a farmer be distracted from battling anything between felon and fungus to be asked, like Mary was, "how does your garden grow?"

Dealing with State Boards- My Column- October 2010

The only question is which of the State entities and their boards will, 24 months from today, be the headline acts for all the wrong reasons. Since UDeCOTT and the Uff Commission nothing has assured the public that the familiar path of shady dealings will not be trodden.
It is a waste of sensible people's time to debate the suitability of choices for boards and related State appointments. Competence, qualification, experience and ethnicity have not been decisive factors in predicting whether boards will be diligent or will land in trouble. UDeCOTT itself demonstrates that these are largely irrelevant: bad behaviour is not that selective.

Christmas Day, We Style- My column- December 2010

Trinidadians are too afraid of God to drive Christ out of Christmas: story done. Of course, also understand that the reverence is mixed up with hog and grog, all in moderation. Christmas has a special excitement about it, and a Trinidad and Tobago Christmas has a special craziness. Spend 364 days yakking about foreign subways and towers and massive malls. Overrate your Starbucks lattes: but if Christmas morning you not in Trinidad and Tobago, you loss.

The PM and her comments on aid to the Caribbean- October 2010

Ultimately, in a week of 180-degree turns, it's the Prime Minister's airside pooja which will fuel the next debate. In all of it, opinions will be heavily influenced by political support, a stubborn resistance to objectivity. Before the pooja, as Tomas was finished with St Lucia, the Prime Minister showed more political skin than she should in the circumstances, a tale about timing. With high winds around, Rowley and Ramlogan also needed better cover, saved from damage by their 180-degree turns. In Rowley's case a good lesson that, in politics, apologies are sometimes better than explanations.

The girl who made me cried- My column- October 2010

There is a photo of me, my face buried in my hands, simultaneously concealing and wiping away the tears. On Thursday, the person who made me cry will turn five. F.I.V.E—yes, like five fingers on one hand— as she would say. Parenting is an enormous challenge if only because parents know so little about it beforehand, a thing that is not taught. Knowledge comes, if it does, through experience and inadvertence and sometimes from bouncing off a series of struggles and challenges.For a few, knowledge comes at a gravesite, beside a hospital bed, or within prison walls. A recent Canadian report on the well-being of children casts a long view of childhood and leaves us fixed on those first 988 weeks upon which their entire lives depend.

Ethnic proportionality- My column- March 2011

Nizam's problem is the fact that in his soliloquy he adopted a cause which was not that of the Police Service Commission's (PSC) he was representing at the time. The matter belongs with the Commissioner and the courts through judicial review on the basis of institutional bias. Nizam, a lawyer, offered little by way of evidence that the Board's deliberations and decision-making were influenced by ethnicity and he did not explain the basis for dragging an unwilling and unprepared PSC into the discussion.

After Nizam...ethnic questions continue- April 2011

I am left with this question: did Nizam Mohammed expose the UNC or upset it? Nizam's submission to Parliament on ethnic proportionality was not accidental. It was grounded in the work of the AG, developed as a newspaper columnist, blogger and lawyer. The public must pay careful attention to see if this work is dead or if it will continue in anonymity and silence, advancing the so-called cause of Indians in a less obvious way. Or is it meant to advance a personal political agenda?

The Five L's of Success in Today World- November 2006

This is a summary published in Prezmen International- based on a speech I gave at the University of the West Indies graduation activities November 2006

Lennox Grant considers Alfred Aguiton challenge- Jan 2011

"To have been there at the start of what eventually became AMPLE, the advertising agency, is to be reminded of the slipperiness of the standing of those who practise, and who identify by the profession of, journalism. Brief words by Alfred Aguiton, surviving half of AMPLE's founding team, in rare print exposure last week, exemplified a facility for witty expression that could credibly be claimed as "journalistic".
Mr Aguiton's cameo on earlier references to him by Clarence Rambharat deftly aimed to cut in half the credentials of the Express columnist self-identified as "university lecturer and lawyer." The columnist, Mr Aguiton suggested, could amount to only half of each: "I kindly believe that from those to whom not much is given, not much is expected." Lest his words could be taken outside the spirit of free-range picong from a man who has what's called a way with words, he ended his letter to the editor: "As a co-Trinidadian, what I am indeed conscripted to do is to enjoy good humour."
Mr Aguiton inhabits language from the inside. To him the credentials of journalism attach as the defining character of a way with words, if not equally a way of life, and vocation."

Alfred Aguiton challenges a point in my column- January 2011

"I have often enjoyed Clarence Rambharat's column in the Express, and do look forward to his witty writing (if not always perspicacious politics).However, I'm thinking…I may be perhaps only half-sure of that now.
Of the four comments related to me in his January 18 piece, he got only two right."

Blogger Phillip Alexander analyzes my column- September 2010

In trying to get better at this writing thing, I practice by taking other peoples writing apart to get a better feel for the flow. It has become a signature move, this 'deconstruction' and commenting, one that others are more than willing to assist with after the fact. Some writers, given more space, could have said so much more.

Here is a good example; Clarence Rambharat, University lecturer and lawyer took Government Ministers Jack Warner and Anil Roberts to task for the most degrading and disgusting behaviors aimed at an ethnic group to which they are a part. Couched in a self deprecating style, the two of them, seemingly high on their achievements and sure of their lofty positions have literally 'put God out of their thoughts' and reduced the lot of my African brothers and sisters (in the Parliament no less), showing clearly why fools should be left out of serious discussion if we ever hope to rise as one people.

Praise for my column- Guardian- March 2011

Public scrutiny of governmental affairs and compelling public interest issues have heightened given the national and international exposure of manifest examples of improper professional advice and extremely poor decision making, in the Reshmi Ramnarine intelligence security scandal and the Government’s decision to cancel the offshore patrol vessels (OPVs).  Such decisions without careful consideration of the adverse implications on our national and international interests appear to be devoid of intelligence, bereft of reason, irrational and impaired judgment. At best, constructive criticisms should redound to the Government’s benefits and not looked upon as attacking the Government.  Clarence Rambharat’s articles in the Express and Theo Feruson, writing in the Trinidad Guardian are good examples of critical thinking for improved governance.

Is the Attorney General acting independently?

This so-called death penalty debate is mainly about the Attorney General's political survival and not crime-fighting. But since anything remotely connected to crime-fighting turns into a UNC/PNM all-fours competition, the scoreboard is out and the battle is on for political chalks. What follows is that a misdeal by the AG or reneging by the PNM will deny the country the use of potential trump in The Constitution (Amendment) (Capital Offences) Bill, 2011. In any interregnum, criminals are the ones to continue shouting bullseye and if you thought it could get no worse, well two pathologists will prove you wrong.

Greens seek compensation for Tobago chopping- My Express column-January 2011

It is alleged that on August 1, 2009 Clint Alexis chopped Tobago residents Peter and Murium Green. The Greens remain blameless so far and required major restorative surgery. Peter remained in a coma for a while and the couple is, understandably, deeply regretful of their semi-permanent move from the UK to Tobago more than five years before. Now as the story of their brutal attack resurfaces and details of their claim for compensation are exposed, three possibilities are evident but only one outcome seems likely.