Gail Alexan­der

For­mer Supreme Court judge Jus­tice Her­bert Vol­ney has ex­pressed se­ri­ous doubt that the "gov­ern­ment of the day" will main­tain re­spect for the in­de­pen­dence of the ju­di­cia­ry "giv­en re­cent sig­nals of fu­ture in­tent." Vol­ney made the re­mark in his res­ig­na­tion let­ter, fol­low­ing his ear­ly re­tire­ment from the Bench, ef­fec­tive to­day. He sent his res­ig­na­tion let­ter yes­ter­day to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards and Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie. UNC chair­man Jack Warn­er said yes­ter­day that he had been ad­vised that Vol­ney is among UNC's front-run­ner nom­i­nees for St Joseph. Screen­ing for St Joseph takes place this morn­ing. Yes­ter­day's Ex­press stat­ed that Vol­ney had hint­ed of his im­pend­ing move dur­ing a court hear­ing re­gard­ing Pow­er 102 ra­dio sta­tion on Tues­day.

Vol­ney has served as a judge of the Supreme Court of Ju­di­ca­ture since Ju­ly 27, 1994. He told the Guardian that he had yes­ter­day morn­ing in­formed Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards of his re­tire­ment from the ju­di­cia­ry. "I seek no of­fice, but if it is of­fered, I will be hum­bled to ac­cept to rep­re­sent peo­ple of the con­stituen­cy of St Joseph where I have lived for the last three years." Vol­ney said he had no link with the UNC or any oth­er par­ty. He said, how­ev­er, that he would not ac­cept the can­di­da­cy of the PNM. Asked about the UNC, Vol­ney said an emis­sary sent by the par­ty's po­lit­i­cal leader vis­it­ed him and asked if he should make him­self avail­able, the par­ty would be in­ter­est­ed in his can­di­da­cy for St Joseph. He said that was about ten days ago. Vol­ney said he is a "man of God."

In his res­ig­na­tion let­ter, Vol­ney who said he has, of late been par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned about the ab­sence of any clear di­rec­tion by the gov­ern­ment of the day with re­gard to pen­sion re­form "... for per­sons who have spent all their life in pub­lic ser­vice, in­clud­ing our judges." He added: "The lot of this group of cit­i­zens who have con­tributed to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment in a sig­nif­i­cant way has been erod­ed by in­fla­tion and the high cost of liv­ing...This group of cit­i­zens are par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to the va­garies of life and de­serve bet­ter. "I al­so can­not re­main for the un­cer­tain­ty that awaits me and my fam­i­ly due to the statu­to­ry pro­hi­bi­tion im­posed up­on a re­tired judge prac­tis­ing in his pro­fes­sion in the law be­fore the ex­piry of ten years," Vol­ney said.

"This pro­hi­bi­tion is harsh, op­pres­sive and back­ward. "I al­so have se­ri­ous doubt that the gov­ern­ment of the day will main­tain a re­spect for the in­de­pen­dence of the ju­di­cia­ry giv­en re­cent sig­nals of fu­ture in­tent. "It has failed to pro­vide the ju­di­cia­ry with the nec­es­sary min­i­mum lo­gis­tic and bud­getary sup­port re­quired to en­sure that it may ef­fec­tive­ly de­liv­er on its con­sti­tu­tion­al re­mit. "As a serv­ing judge, I am un­able to speak out on the in­ep­ti­tude of gov­er­nance to ef­fect sys­temic change to mat­ters that have left the ad­min­is­tra­tion of crim­i­nal jus­tice in vir­tu­al sham­bles."