Achong rejects claims of bias during judicial tenure

Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­[email protected]

For­mer In­dus­tri­al Court judge and chair­man of the Es­sen­tial Ser­vices Di­vi­sion, Lawrence Achong, is de­fend­ing his ju­di­cial lega­cy amid ac­cu­sa­tions of po­lit­i­cal bias, warn­ing that the pow­ers and cred­i­bil­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s In­dus­tri­al Court are be­ing sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly weak­ened, while hint­ing at pos­si­ble le­gal ac­tion against trade union lead­ers who pub­licly at­tacked him dur­ing his tenure.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Achong re­ject­ed claims from sec­tions of the labour move­ment that his rul­ings were po­lit­i­cal­ly in­flu­enced, in­sist­ing his de­ci­sions were ground­ed strict­ly in law, ev­i­dence, and eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties.

“To ac­cuse me of be­ing bi­ased to­wards the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), I think that is fool­ish­ness,” he said.

“What I do is be­cause I think it is right. I think it is the cor­rect thing to do.”

He main­tained that his record showed he ruled in favour of both work­ers and the State, de­pend­ing on the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed.

“It didn’t mat­ter if it came from a PNM gov­ern­ment or a UNC gov­ern­ment,” Achong said.

“That didn’t mat­ter.”

How­ev­er, Achong said the crit­i­cism di­rect­ed at him over time be­came in­tense, per­son­al and, in his words, abu­sive in na­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly from sec­tions of the trade union move­ment.
He said the back­lash stemmed from dis­sat­is­fac­tion with rul­ings that unions did not agree with.

De­spite the con­tro­ver­sy, Achong said he re­mained firm in his be­lief that his de­ci­sions were made in good faith and with­out po­lit­i­cal di­rec­tion.

“To ac­cuse me of be­ing bi­ased to­wards the PNM is non­sense,” he said.

“I think it is the cor­rect thing to do, and I stand by it.”

Achong said what made the ex­pe­ri­ence more dif­fi­cult was that crit­i­cism of­ten ig­nored rul­ings that went in favour of work­ers and fo­cused on­ly on de­ci­sions they op­posed.

“The most vo­cif­er­ous peo­ple were the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion and OW­TU,” he said.

He ad­mit­ted that the at­tacks did af­fect him emo­tion­al­ly, even though he tried not to show it pub­licly or al­low it to in­flu­ence his ju­di­cial work.

Achong said much of the pub­lic crit­i­cism mis­un­der­stood how the court func­tioned and how de­ci­sions were as­signed and de­liv­ered.

De­spite the hos­til­i­ty, he in­sist­ed he re­mained fo­cused on the law rather than pub­lic per­cep­tion.

Ad­dress­ing why he is speak­ing out now af­ter al­most a year of rel­a­tive si­lence, Achong said he could no longer ig­nore what he sees as re­peat­ed mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions of his work and char­ac­ter.

“When I see state­ments be­ing made that are not true, and my name be­ing dragged through the mud, I think it is nec­es­sary to re­spond,” he said.

“At some point, you have to cor­rect the record.”

He added that the de­ci­sion to re­main silent for years was de­lib­er­ate, but not per­ma­nent.

Achong ac­cused some union lead­ers of de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ing court rul­ings to cre­ate a pub­lic per­cep­tion of bias, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­la­tion to mat­ters in­volv­ing the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion and the Spe­cial Tri­bunal.

He al­so took aim at the qual­i­ty of lead­er­ship with­in parts of the labour move­ment.

“The qual­i­ty of union lead­er­ship in this coun­try has gone to ze­ro,” Achong said.

“Noth­ing com­pared to when you had men like Er­rol McLeod and George Weekes. They fought for work­ers, but they were gen­tle­men and they knew their stuff.”

Achong re­served some of his harsh­est crit­i­cism for the state of the In­dus­tri­al Court it­self, claim­ing the in­sti­tu­tion suf­fered years of ad­min­is­tra­tive de­cline and grow­ing case back­logs.

“The schol­ar­ship has gone from the ju­di­cia­ry,” he said.

“The pow­ers of the In­dus­tri­al Court have been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly whit­tled down.”

Achong al­so warned that on­go­ing at­tacks on his record were part of a broad­er mis­un­der­stand­ing of the In­dus­tri­al Court’s role and pres­sures.

He fur­ther sug­gest­ed that pub­lic at­tacks against him and re­cent con­tro­ver­sies in­volv­ing the court may form part of broad­er at­tempts to in­flu­ence or re­shape the in­sti­tu­tion’s lead­er­ship.

“All this thing hap­pen­ing now with these ar­ti­cles, I see it as a move to re­move the pres­i­dent in a year’s time,” he claimed.

Now re­tired, Achong said he spends time with his fam­i­ly and has stepped away from pub­lic life but re­mains firm in de­fend­ing his in­tegri­ty.

Achong ad­mit­ted he re­mains an­gered by at­tacks on his rep­u­ta­tion and is con­sid­er­ing le­gal ac­tion against some of his crit­ics.

“Ro­get and them, for the most part, I’ll take them to court,” he said, re­fer­ring to OW­TU pres­i­dent An­cel Ro­get and oth­er union fig­ures.

“I have had my run,” he said.
“But I will not sit back and al­low false nar­ra­tives to stand un­chal­lenged.”

Re­spond­ing to the claims of the for­mer In­dus­tri­al Court judge, NATUC gen­er­al sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette said, “Time has a way of re­veal­ing the truth, and when it does, we will all see where it tru­ly lies. That is all I have to say.”

Ef­forts to con­tact JTUM gen­er­al sec­re­tary and OW­TU chief ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer Ozzie War­wick on Achong’s com­ments were un­suc­cess­ful.