Lying Lawyers

I have chosen a life of legal academia over one of legal practice because I want no part of a legal profession that is deep in the dumps of dishonesty and mired in the most atrocious unethical behaviour imaginable.

Integrity in Trinidad and Tobago’s legal profession is now so rare that the ethical behaviour of the many otherwise honest attorneys is always shocking to me.

The lack of ethics in the legal profession has leaked out of offices and the courtrooms and is now forming a pool of the foulest deceit in Parliament. The lawyers in Parliament, some of whom have given themselves silk, continue to play games with the legal structure of our country to improve their status and resulting financial gain.

The legal muscle-flexing competition is once again on as the UNC mounts a constitutional challenge against the PNM government’s plan to re-implement the same tax that the UNC administration proposed to re-introduce during their time in office.

How do these people sleep at night? We also saw this in recent years when the hypocrisy from lawyers representing both major political parties regarding the debate on the Miscellaneous Provisions (Anti-Gang and Bail) Bill 2016. When Kamla Persad- Bissessar spoke in Parliament on January 18, 2006, she was the most vehement voice of opposition against denying bail for persons charged with kidnapping, going as far as calling it unconstitutional. However, two months after winning the 2010 general election — before the electoral ink had been properly washed off of the fingers of voters — the UNC/PP led by Persad-Bissessar introduced a series of bills to deny bail to anyone charged with kidnapping, firearms or those suspected of being in a gang.

This meant that the dishonest legal minds on team-PNM now had their opportunity to oppose the same law they attempted to pass a few years prior. When the topic came up for discussion again, both Faris Al-Rawi, in the Senate on January 21, 2014, and Fitzgerald Hinds, who was a government minister during the PNM’s attempt to pass the law in 2006, used the exact argument proffered by Persad-Bissessar.

But guess what? Just a few months after the 2015 general election, the PNM attempted to extend the same law that they knew to be unconstitutional.

Just imagine that we are paying legal minds to sit in our Parliament to fight over passing laws that are unconstitutional while we play politics in the background.

Needless to say, the enactment of anti-bail laws that lawyers already knew to be unconstitutional, lay the groundwork for the state of emergency in 2011, and since the illegal detention of hundreds of men during that period, the public purse is still being used to pay compensation to everyone whose constitutional rights was arbitrarily infringed.

And you will be surprised to know who are the attorneys representing some of these men.

One does not have to look far to find more examples of dishonesty when we have the scandal surrounding the Children’s Community Residences, Foster Care and Nurseries Act, “prison- gate” and the $900 million spent on legal fees by the UNC/ PP to fatten the pockets of their colleagues.

We could go on and on. The codes of ethics in both the Legal Profession Act and the Integrity in Public Life Act are meaningless words on paper.

The legal profession used to be something to aspire to, but now it is just as undesirable as becoming a member of the Police Service. Sybarites have taken over the legal profession and the Law Association is an enabler.

I speak from my personal experience; when I first returned home a few years ago, I sent an e-mail to the Law Association and copied all the UWI law schools in the Caribbean pleading with them to put more focus on ethics in order to eradicate corruption, but instead of taking me seriously, my email was forwarded by the Law Association to a prominent attorney whose name I invoked. That attorney then sent me a pre-action protocol letter and in my response, I dared him to sue me, but of course he knew he couldn’t.

I will always stand up against lying lawyers and corruption... it is just a shame that so many of the honest lawyers won’t do the same.

In my view, if you aren’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

jamille85@ msn.com