PM's lawyer says Justice Deyalsingh's anti-PNM articles tainted judgment

Retired High Court Judge, Lennox Deyalsingh, was harshly criticized in the Court of Appeal Wednesday by a government lawyer in an appeal by Prime Minister Patrick Manning and his Cabinet relating to the Caroni lands case.

Reginald Armour told the court Deyalsingh had an apparent bias, which might have tainted his judgment in adjudicating on the case. He referred to newspaper articles and a letter published in the media, in which the judge was critical of the People’s National Movement (PNM) and the Manning government.

Armour argued that Deyalsingh erred in law since he did not disclose during the court proceedings that he wrote the articles. He said "the fair-minded observer" did not have the opportunity to conclude there was the possibility of bias in the case.

The matter before the appeal court was a judgment made on Dec. 7, 2007 in which Deyalsingh ordered the government to grant leases to ex-Caroni (1975) Ltd workers for Caroni lands which were promised to them more than six years before.

He set a June 30, 2008 for the two-acre agricultural plots to be leased to 7,900 displaced workers and ordered that “proper infrastructure, including access, drainage and irrigation facilities” be attached to each plot.

Armour told the court Deyalsisngh's four articles were published in the media between November 2004 and January 2005. Deyalsingh was retired at the time.

However he was recalled as a temporary judge and assigned the Caroni case. It was during that time that he wrote the letter that Armour said was out of line.

The article entitled “Frontal assault on the Judiciary” was published on July 17, 2006. It was a commentary on the attempt by the state to arrest then Chief Justice Sat Sharma, which he called “the most serious threat to democracy that this country has ever seen.”

“Why can a member of the judiciary not speak out on what he perceives to be a threat with the attempt to arrest the Chief Justice?” one of the appeal court justices asked, to which Armour replied, “A judge can speak out when he perceives there is a threat to the judiciary by the executive. If this was a stand-alone letter, it would pass over us. It cannot be disconnected from the other four articles. You cannot take the letter by itself.”

Another judge noted that what occurred with the Chief Justice was extraordinary and that judicial comments then were justified. But Armour said what was wrong with Deyalsingh's commentary "was the tone of the article. I am not criticising the judge for writing, but it was the manner in what he had written.”

In Deyalsingh's earlier works he wrote about a corrupt PNM government and about the murder of former Attorney General, Selwyn Richardson, who was fighting corruption.

Deyalsingh was also critical of Basdeo Panday and in one article suggested that Panday was on a path of political self-destruction.