“What is the cost of lies? It’s not that we confuse it with the truth; the real danger is if we hear enough lies, we don’t recognise the truth at all.”

Our Attorney General’s office is now ground zero for irremediable and successive constitutional disasters. With each day, it resembles less of the noble and revered institution one occupied by giants such as Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj SC or Karl Hudson Phillips QC and more like a nuclear disaster zone.

Incidentally, my favourite scene in the HBO hit series Chernobyl, which details the infamous 1986 nuclear accident, occurs in the very last episode. In it, Soviet scientist Valery Lagasov is testifying in the trial of the three engineers on call at the power plant on the night the reactor exploded and on whom the state intended to lay sole blame for the disaster.

Like all “trials” in authoritarian regimes, this one was meant to be a foregone conclusion, but Lagasov uses the occasion to speak the truth, namely the truth about the dangerous design flaw of Soviet-made reactors. The state-controlled judicial officer cautioned him that blaming the state is “trodding on dangerous ground,” Lagasov answers:

“When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid. That is how an RBMK reactor core explodes.”

I remembered these words this week as I watched the Attorney General’s press conference in which he attempted to “explain” why the State failed to put in a defence in a $20 million judgement against the it by the nine former murder accused involved in the Vindra Naipaul-Coolman criminal matter.

For many of my colleagues in the legal profession, watching the Attorney General’s press conference was akin to watching the meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. And just as with Chernobyl, AG Armour’s desperate attempt to blame this disaster on faceless public servants and legal officers in the AG’s office (who are well respected, extremely competent, and often fierce defenders of the public interest and purse) only serves to highlight the glaring deficiencies in the administration of the AG’s office and the leadership of Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley.

According to AG Armour, this massive blunder occurred because the case file had “disappeared” and thus the State was not aware of impending court hearings. I need not recite the rules of court, or the chronology of proceedings amply described by the Freedom House Press release; suffice it to say that the AG’s explanation sounded much like the Soviet propaganda at the time of the Chernobyl meltdown: “Soviet reactors cannot fail, it must have been sabotage.”

Much like Chernobyl, this meltdown of the Attorney General’s office did not occur in a vacuum, rather it was the product of a chain reaction of events guided by a Government that has little regard for the rule of law and instead places its trust in cronyism, gaining absolute control and undermining independent institutions.

Last year Mr Armour was disqualified from representing Trinidad and Tobago in civil proceedings in the Piarco Airport matter by a court in Miami. Before becoming AG, Mr Armour had served on the legal team of some defendants in the Airport enquiry matter.

According to Florida rules of professional responsibility, Mr Armour could not ethically represent Trinidad and Tobago against his former client in the same matter. Mr Armour’s explanation that he was a mere “notetaker” and was not senior counsel at the time while acting for the defendants were seemingly mendacious claims given the content of court transcripts which show him making legal arguments and giving submissions on evidence.

It was at this point that Mr Armour should have resigned or been fired by the Prime Minister. However, not only has Mr Armour refused to even offer his resignation, but Dr Rowley defied all reality and logic by insisting that Mr Armour was never disqualified from the Miami court, and apparently no amount of court documents proving otherwise could change his mind.

More recently, it has been discovered that the Attorney General’s Office gave an indemnity to a State witness, Vincent Nelson, in criminal proceedings, which reeks of political persecution and deliberate undermining of the DPP’s office.

Again, much like the Miami Court Misrepresentation and the now Missing File Mystery, the damage done to what we hope would be an engine room of democracy—our Attorney General’s Office—will leave a permanent and lasting dead zone. The common thread of these ignominious occurrences? Lies. As a people, and a society, we have been abused by State lies, and these lies are catching up to us, slowly but inevitably. Those of us who stay silent, enable them; those of us who defend them are ensuring our Republic’s demise and those of us who wish to resist them are becoming few and far between.

Kiel Taklalsingh

Attorney-at-law