Attorney General Anand Ramlogan says the order against Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley in the e-mailgate defamation matter stands and he did not intend to retract anything he said about the matter on Thursday. He said so in an interview after attorney for Rowley in the matter, Senator Faris Al-Rawi, said an e-mail from Justice Frank Rampersad was only dispatched to him yesterday from the Judicial Support Officer Stacy Seemungal.
“The judgment is valid and binding until such time as it is set aside,” Ramlogan added. He said he had “no difficulty if this matter goes to a full trial.” He said he wanted “Dr Rowley in a witness box, under oath to be grilled under cross-examination, so that he could produce the evidence he has to justify his claim that these bogus, criminal e-mails were in fact exchanged between the Prime Minister and I.”
He said the defendant was only seeking to delay the matter by seeking “adjournments and making a mockery by converting it into a circus of applications for extension of time and not meeting the deadlines set by the court.” He said Al-Rawi must indicate whether he was prepared to ask the court for an urgent and early trial of the matter.
But Al-Rawi, speaking during a news briefing at the Opposition Leader’s office, Charles Street, Port-of-Spain, yesterday, said the e-mail indicating the January 7 deadline “was not copied to me as Dr Rowley’s attorney in these matters.”
The e-mail said Judicial Support Officer (JSO) Ms Pariag, who is attached to Justice Seepersad’s team, was to inform the parties that the order was granted. The e-mail also stated, “She inadvertently and without any direction from the Judge e-mailed the claimant. She also sent an e-mail to the claimant’s attorney-at-law but failed to either call or inform the defendant’s attorney-at-law of the terms of the judge’s order.”
The e-mail also said, “In the circumstances there is no information on the Captioned file that indicates that the Defendant was informed of the Judge’s Order, dated December 16, 2014.” But Ramlogan said he could not verify the authenticity of that e-mail and was not prepared to comment in detail on it.
But Al-Rawi said the registrar of the High Court would be asked to investigate this development. He accused Ramlogan of bringing the administration of justice into disrepute by his comments on the matter on Thursday. “Indeed, this demonstrates that there was a significant gap in the judicial administrative process.” He said Ramlogan had brought the office of AG into disrepute.
Al-Rawi said Ramlogan had received the e-mail on the order “improperly” from a JSO. Ramlogan filed the matter in the court last December after Rowley made public statements about the alleged e-mails from Ramlogan, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and other officials purporting to discuss the bugging of the office of the DPP and a plot against a T&T Guardian reporter following publication of the Section 34 scandal in 2013.