Open Wide... (Shifting Blame on Section 34)

Sitting in the CNC3 lobby on Monday morning I (like many others I am sure) watched with disbelief that station's resident political analyst Dr. Hamid Ghany, in an interview with host Hema Ramkissoon, attempt to spin the Section 34 fiasco and put the blame on ex-President Max Richards and I literally could not believe what my ears were telling me they were hearing. My first thought was, is this man for real? Isn't he the same man who has time and again explained to the public that the President acts 'on the advice of the Prime Minister' and in that regard has no real say on what he is instructed to do? And if as he has said time and again, that the President is a Constitutional 'rubber stamp' for the whims and fancies of the Prime Minister, why blame the tool and not the hand that wields it? Because to follow his thin logic then the pen, the room, the desk, the chair, even the air conditioning that might have kept them all cool as they pushed through their indecency should share equal blame as the President and all be held to account, not so?

Now for my part and early in the thing I asked why the then President did not question the surreptitious nature of the hurried deceit and delay so as to secure advice as to its proclamation, but as we all have to be guided by the Supreme Law in issues such as these, I did some research:

According to the Constitution of the Republic of Trinidad & Tobago, Section eighty states -  “In the exercise of his functions under this Constitution or any other law, the President shall act in accordance with the advice of the Cabinet or a Minister acting under the general authority of the Cabinet, except in cases where other provision is made by this Constitution or such other law, and, without prejudice to the generality of this exception, in cases where by this Constitution or such other law he is required to act-
(a) in his discretion;
(b) after consultation with any person or authority other than
the Cabinet; or
(c) in accordance with the advice of any person or authority other than the Cabinet.”

Where in that does Dr. Ghany find the discretionary power for the President to refuse to proclaim laws based on what was sent to him by the Cabinet? I find it most strange that of all people to ascribe blame to in the chain of events that led to the final proclamation of Section 34 Dr. Hamid Ghany chose such an unlikely link and I await the ex-President's response to this wild and scandalous claim. I have asked on numerous occasions why the fired Justice Minister has not been investigated for misbehavior in Public Office as the Prime Minister alleged when she unceremoniously tossed him out after placing the entire blame for the affair on his shoulders, and now I ask, what can be done in this situation if Dr. Ghany is correct and the ex-President was part and parcel of the conspiracy?

I must say that I am totally and completely disappointed in Dr. Ghany's performance and it is my view that he has diluted his public influence by making such a stupid, ill timed and badly thought out pronouncement. The obvious and next question to that has to be, now what? Will the ex-President allow himself to be painted as a willing co-conspirator and trot off to join ex-Justice Minister Herbert Volney in the small but growing Section 34 Culpability Club? Or can we expect him to debunk Dr. Ghany's claim and clear his own good name from any willful involvement in that fiasco? It appears to me that he might have felt the pressure of the legal luminaries that preceded him on air and, in the rush to sound equally knowledgeable, may have opened up a whole new can of proverbial worms and one that must be emptied in its entirety if the people of this country are to ever know what really happened, why it happened and who was ultimately responsible for the abortion of reason and good governance that was Section 34. Was this performance more crafted distraction from those very questions? I find that I can hardly wait for the ex-President's response.