Law Association president Martin Daly has declined comment on the assertion by National Association for the Empowerment of African People (NAEAP) president Selwyn Cudjoe that the Law Association was being used to promote a ’racist agenda’.

Cudjoe was commenting on the motion of no-confidence which was passed by the Law Association against Attorney General John Jeremie.

Government ministers had charged the Law Association with political bias. But Cudjoe added a new dimension to the discussion. He pointed out that 15 of the 16 members of the Executive Council of the Law Association are East Indians.

Cudjoe, who delivered an address at the 9th Emancipation Day dinner at the Centre of Excellence, Tunapuna, last Friday said that the racial composition of the Executive Council of the Law Association ’suggests that if we are not talking of racial preference, we are certainly talking of ethnic dominance’. ’Such a (no-confidence) motion struck us in NAEAP as the use of a respected institution to promote a racist agenda,’ he said.

Cudjoe said the NAEAP wrote to Daly on June 6, to express its concerns. In the letter, he noted, that his organisaton could see no legitimate reason why the Law Association ’should mount an attack on the Attorney General who had in the past demonstrated his mettle by putting his shoulder to the wheel in an attempt to weed out corruption at the highest level’.

He said Daly in his ’gracious reply’ dated July 2, rejected the charges and assured that organisation that the election to the Executive Council was open to all, regardless of colour, creed, or race,’ provided they were willing to give up the considerable time necessary in order to serve. Cudjoe said this statement by Daly appeared to suggest that only East Indians were willing to ’undertake the hard work of representing the legal profession’.

Cudjoe added that a meeting of NAEAP and ten other concerned groups at the Seamen and Waterfront Workers Trade Union Building on July 18 to protest the racist posture of the Law Association got little coverage by the media. The meeting ironically was held one day after Dr Tim Gopeesingh’s infamous comment on ethnic cleansing. ’We held a press statement...Nothing was heard about it...Dr Gopeesingh is free to say what he wants to say; the Law Association is free to attack a black Attorney General; and our medical school is free to take in who it wishes even though such racial exclusion is illegal,’ Cudjoe said.

Since the passage of the motion of no-confidence in Jeremie by the Law Association, Jeremie has met Daly and some members of the Council and Jeremie even attended the wine and cheese function hosted by the Association on July 31 to mark the end of the law term.