HIGH Court Judge Rajendra Narine got caught up in a whirlwind of controversy last week following his order the week before to forward a controversial affidavit, sworn to by Jamaat-al-Muslimeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr, to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and police for investigation.

In the affidavit, Bakr alleges that Prime Minister Patrick Manning struck a deal with the Muslimeen to secure votes for the People’s National Movement in the general election of 2002 and that the Prime Minister agreed to forgive a $32 million debt owed the State as a result of damages incurred in the July 27, 1990 coup attempt.

Condemnation of Justice Narine’s order came from several quarters, the most vociferous coming from Attorney General John Jeremie who went to Parliament to say that he had written Chief Justice Ivor Archie on the issue and, noting in his statement that the judge’s action was in defiance of decisions by both the Appeal Court and the Privy Council, declared:

’How then could the judge consider it proper to refer to this affidavit and further more send it to third parties?’

A retired judge of the Court of Appeal, Jean Permanand, also declared Narine to be wrong to have ordered the affidavit be sent to the DPP and the police. She maintained that the affidavit did not exist legally as it was struck out by both the Court of Appeal and the Privy Council.

Talking on TV6’s Morning Edition on Thursday, Permanand also said that Jeremie was within his right to condemn Narine’s order in the Parliament since legally, the affidavit does not exist.

Narine was sworn in as a judge of the Appeal Court last week.

The recent announcement of his appointment to the Appeal Court may have come as a surprise to at least one of his colleagues. In a newspaper interview on August 1 last year, Justice Herbert Volney said that, like himself, Narine was one of the judges who did not stand ’a snowball’s chance in hell’ of being considered for promotion because of their independent nature.

Despite his quiet and unassuming demeanour, Narine, who became a puisne judge in 1997, is no stranger to making forceful comments on issues which may arise from an appraisal of the cases coming before him.

On January 31, 2006, the Express reported Narine commenting on the lack of resources allocated to the Judiciary and prison authorities in a matter involving a constitutional motion filed by a prisoner who argued that the State violated his constitutional right by failing to adequately protect him.

The prisoner filed the motion after he was stripped of his clothes, beaten with a chain and cut with a razor blade after a group of prisoners set fire in a holding cell at the San Fernando Magistrates’ Court in 1998.

He described the riot as a ’recipe for disaster’ and said the situation pointed to a lack of preparedness on the part of law enforcement agencies to defuse similar disturbances which continue to take place without any serious action from the authorities.

Narine said police officers were, very often, hard pressed to impose any sort of control in situations where magistrates are threatened by prisoners while in court.

’Clearly, this is a question of how the State views the importance of prisoner security. If we are talking about crime (in the context of) taking away the right to bail, then we are going to have more people in jail.

’You must then have appropriate security measures in place,’ he said.

Just two years before that, Narine had lamented that the education system was failing a large number of young people who found themselves with no other choice but to commit crimes to survive.

He said that it was becoming an ’all too familiar (sight)’ that a large number of young males ranging in ages from 17 to 21, with little or no education, and coming from single-parent homes where there is alcohol use and parental abuse, were resorting to criminal activities.

’There is no support for young children who fall through the cracks of the education system,’ Narine said. ’They may very well be used by less savoury influences or recruited by those who make a living from organised crime.’

He said it was important to ’retool’ those who found themselves in the penal system by providing them with an education to enable them to re-enter society without having to resort to criminal actions to survive.

His comments in this instance came as he sentenced a 21-year-old for the killing of a 68-year-old Maraval woman during a robbery at her home in 1999. The young man had sprayed the woman in her face with a fire extinguisher, beat her on the head with a canister, and then tied her neck with a cord. The post-mortem showed that she died due to strangulation.

Then in May 2005, Narine told a nine-member jury that he was surprised by their not guilty verdict delivered in favour of a man charged with kidnapping a teenage girl in 2002.

Narine said it was obvious that the system of justice being employed in Trinidad was not working as he referred to two previous cases in which the accused were freed, despite what he described as compelling evidence of their guilt.

He said he felt compelled to comment on the verdict-something which he did not often do.

’I found your verdict very surprising,’ he told the jury.

’I am sure you applied your best efforts but very often I wonder whether or not our system of criminal justice really works.

’I am simply saying that it seems to me that the system we have is not working.’

Another hard-hitting comment made by the judge in April 2005 came as he knocked the Integrity Commission for exempting Members of Parliament and other public officials from declaring their assets during the 18-18 general election deadlock in 2002.

Describing the decision as absurd, Narine gave the Commission three months to take the prescribed forms before Parliament and ordered that persons in public life must file their declarations of income assets and liabilities and statements of registerable interests for 2002.

’The unreasonableness of the decision is patent when one considers the vital role the institution plays in the context of the politics of Trinidad and Tobago, where the issue of corruption occupies centre stage,’ the judge said.

He was in the spotlight once again when, in May 2006, he granted a late Friday afternoon injunction in favour of then Chief Justice Satnarine Sharma who fought to block legal moves to have him impeached or removed from office.

A team of lawyers had filed an application on Sharma’s behalf claiming procedural impropriety and prejudice on the part of Prime Minister Patrick Manning.