On Republic night around 9 pm the Minister of Finance was involved in an accident. Dr Ashni Singh, at the wheel of a Nissan Pathfinder, emerged from Delph Avenue and crashed into a taxi travelling west on Garnett Street, sending it careening into the trench and injuring its driver and passenger in the process. According to the injured, the Minister appeared unhurt when he came out of his vehicle, and could be heard saying, “No cameras”; nevertheless, he did not wait around to inquire about the condition of those in the taxi or render them assistance. He was picked up a short while later by another vehicle which was subsequently reported as belonging to the Ministry of Agriculture. Mr Jageshwar Hira, the taxi driver, also told reporters on the scene that Dr Singh had appeared to be under the influence of alcohol.
Some time later the police arrived, although who called them is not a detail of information which has landed in the public domain as yet; what is known, however, is that businessman Mr Brian Yong put in an appearance and offered to pay Mr Hira compensation and cover any medical expenses. (The following day Mr Yong did pay medical bills incurred up to that point.) Subsequently Mr Hira and his passenger, Ms Parbattie Shivcharan, were taken to hospital, and then the former went to Kitty Police Station to report the accident. When this newspaper spoke to him on Tuesday, he said that his car was at the station, but not the one which had been driven by the Minister.
The story then took a slightly unexpected turn when it was reported that Attorney General Anil Nandlall had met the occupants of the taxi at his office to work on a “settlement.” Mr Hira and Ms Shivcharan had no counsel present at the discussions. When Stabroek News spoke to Mr Nandlall on Wednesday, he said that as the Attorney General he was the legal counsel for Dr Singh, who was driving a government vehicle and “was Minister of Finance when he was driving.” He declined to make a distinction between the private and public spheres, saying, “there is no division; a minister does not stop being a minister during the course of the day.” In addition, he went on to affirm that there was no conflict of interest in his role as minister and counsel for Dr Singh.
The Minister of Finance has had nothing to say about the matter, and the first official statement on what happened was issued by the Attorney General four days after the event. In that statement he said that the Minister was taken to a city hospital for medical attention “shortly after the accident,” and that an “associate” of Dr Singh arranged for the occupants of the taxi to be taken to a hospital for treatment. He then said that the “matter was duly reported to the police…”
He acknowledged his contacts with the taxi driver and the passenger with a view to “bringing the matter to an amicable end,” and denied that the Minister of Finance was intoxicated “and failed to submit himself to a breathalyser test.” In fact, he continued, “the occasion to do so did not present itself.”
The obvious thing to say about of all this is that the Minister was clearly at fault since he was coming from a minor road onto a major one, and since the matter is in the hands of the police, one would expect that some kind of charge would follow. In our edition yesterday we reported Crime Chief Seelall Persaud as saying that there were special protocols which applied to senior government officials in such situations, one of which was that the file would have to be sent to the DPP. What the others were – if indeed there are others – was not elaborated on, but the public is certainly entitled to be informed about them and the reasons (other than security ones at times of tension) they have been instituted.
Be all that as it may, one would not imagine that any protocol could override the law of the land and cause a potential charge against a minister to be dropped or the required procedures for an investigation to be overridden. The AG, of course, has acknowledged he is in talks with Mr Hira and Ms Sewcharan about an “amicable settlement”, but this cannot be in lieu of any police case; it is something entirely separate.
If the sequence of events had been different, one of the lines of inquiry one would have expected the police to pursue would have been whether Dr Singh was driving under the influence, as it is popularly known. Mr Nandlall has stated that the Minister of Finance was not “intoxicated,” although no one has suggested that he was anywhere close to staggering drunk. In any case, the issue is not whether on the scene or immediately afterwards he appeared inebriated, but whether he had been drinking before he entered his vehicle, and whether he had enough alcohol in his bloodstream to impair his judgement while driving. For instance, he might have appeared perfectly lucid and in command of himself, and still not have been in a fit state to drive.
In other jurisdictions the issue in such situations is the amount of alcohol in the bloodstream, the levels of which are set by law. Quite seemingly sober drivers are sometimes tested by some other police forces following an accident, and in this local instance too the only way to have eliminated the alcohol allegation from the matter would have been to breathalyse the Minister. But of course Dr Singh did not go to the station immediately following the accident, and in any case, the sorry saga of the three functioning breath-alysers, only one of which is assigned to ‘A’Division where this accident took place, has been well publicized, making it unlikely that it would have been brought to Kitty on a public holiday even if he had gone there.
Traffic Chief Hugh Dehnert told this newspaper on Thursday that parties involved in road accidents have up to 24 hours to report to the police, and given that time-frame obtaining an accurate reading from a breathalyser would be extremely difficult. The way the law was drafted, he continued, a person leaving the scene of an accident could elude being subjected to a breathalyser test. That aside, there would be a possible charge if the accident were not reported – although that was done in this case, presumably by an associate of the Minister – and failing to render assistance. The AG made a point of stating that Dr Singh was taken to a city hospital – although as noted above those on the scene believed he was unhurt – and an associate of his assisted the other two parties.
The whole point is that government officials, particularly those who are very senior like the Minister of Finance, must be seen to be subject to the same laws as the ordinary citizen. There can be no special exemptions for them when they breach the traffic laws, or commit any other offence, for that matter. If they are above the law, then why should anyone else be bound by it? Constitutionally speaking they are not above the law, of course, but that must be seen to be the case. In these situations, perception is everything, and Dr Singh himself should be sensitive to the need for the letter of the law to be seen to be observed. His reputation will not be saved by successfully avoiding due process; it will in fact be damaged by it.
There is one other disquieting feature of this case, and that is the fact that Dr Singh’s counsel is none other than the AG. While as noted above Mr Nandlall, whose job description entails him acting as counsel to the government, has argued by implication that his client was functioning in a public capacity. This is a hard position to sustain, if only because Dr Singh was not on public business when the accident occurred. In fact, it was by arguing that it was a private issue that a parliamentary debate was avoided last week. The AG cannot have it both ways. In addition, needless to say, the AG’s chambers, an official venue owned by the state, should not be used for discussions on a settlement in a private matter. If Mr Nandlall is to avoid a conflict of interest situation, then he should advise Dr Singh to hire his own private lawyer and pursue whatever negotiations he sees as necessary with the other parties in private chambers.
