BASSETERRE, St.Kitts (Friday 14th February 2020) – “This is an amazing attempt at damage control. It’s an amazing attempt at damage control that I have never seen in my life before that rather than deal with the matter in the court you are now publicly attacking the aggrieved party and the lawyers representing them. Well guess what? You have perhaps made the wrong choice.”
So said lawyer Sylvester Anthony when he called into the weekly sponsored ‘Issues’ programme of the People’s Action Movement (PAM) featuring Chairman Jonel Powell and Parliamentary Representative for Constituency Four Lindsay Grant aired yesterday (13th February 2020) on Freedom FM, hosted by Juni Liburd.
Grant and Powell-both lawyers by profession- are defendants in an ongoing court matter surrounding misappropriating of client’s funds by claimant Tanzania Tobing Tanzil who is being represented by the Law offices of Sylvester Anthony.
“I need to make just two points very, very clearly. Until now we have spoken in my Chambers- my client Mr. Tanzil- have through the filings we have made in court; filings which the two gentlemen on your paid programme had opportunities to respond to. One can judge what the responses have been this far- but we have remained silent in this matter and spoke through our court filings. Now that these two gentlemen have decided to take this matter on the public airwaves and to attack our client and as well as ourselves, my chambers, you can rest assured that we will be responding in due course,” Anthony pointed out.
He continued: “Perhaps, one of the first things they need to explain to the public is what has happened to the criminal complaint filed by client Mr Tanzil and why is it that the police inspector who was investigating that criminal complaint was so merrily transferred out of the unit that was investigating the complaint to an out station. That is a matter that we’ll be following in the next few days so now that they have decided to make this matter a political matter, we will respond in kind since the effort now is to not just attack the client but to attack the firm representing the client. This is an amazing attempt at damage control. It’s an amazing attempt at damage control that I have never seen in my life before that rather than deal with the matter in the court you are now publicly attacking the aggrieved party and the lawyers representing them. Well, guess what? You have perhaps made the wrong choice.”
Following Anthony’s remarks, when asked by the show’s host asked for a response Grant stated “I would not even dignify that with a response to which Powell replied “Agreed. I stick by the judgement of the court.”
Grant while speaking about alleged political nature of the issue before Anthony called in had stated: “ I find this nothing but a political ploy by Mr.Tanzil and his legal team and I hold no water in my mouth to say that; a political ploy by Mr.Tanzil and his legal team to sully our good names…”
According to Powell: “This thing is nothing more than political propaganda and it goes to show that no matter how they may try to change their name or change a face here or there, it is the same old Labour Party nasty politics and propaganda and I am disappointed that members of the legal fraternity have allowed themselves to get caught up in this.”
Other sentiments linked to the topic saw Powell expressing further sentiments such as “This matter is all about politics. Elections are upon us.” and “The same old nasty Labour politics has reared its head.”
At this week’s court of appeal sitting, Powell explained that as a result of the hearing, their application was dismissed as filed “due to a procedural defect and now we’re at liberty to refile the documents correcting that defect. We have already instructed our legal counsel and hopefully by the end of today that should have been dealt with and refiled before the court of Appeal next sitting hopefully once it is scheduled so.”
He pointed out that he and Grant are confident that they have done “nothing wrong” and that the court will find such in their favour.