Ken Ali

Ju­rist-turn-politi­cian Her­bert Vol­ney last night stout­ly de­nied Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's dark al­le­ga­tions of be­ing in­volved in wrong­do­ing. "He is ly­ing, he is a des­per­ate man," Vol­ney said, in re­sponse to Man­ning's claims that he was the sub­ject of in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices. He stressed that he had nev­er act­ed in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ly. He vol­un­teered that he has a bank mort­gage on his home, and added that he was now un­em­ployed, hav­ing re­tired a day ear­li­er as a High Court judge. Vol­ney, in a free-speak­ing in­ter­view with CNC3's an­chor­woman Shelly Dass-Clarke, slammed Man­ning, say­ing he no longer trusts him.

"I once trust­ed him," said the ex-ju­rist, who re­vealed that he had pre­vi­ous­ly vot­ed for the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM). He said he now trusts UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who, he added, "stands for change." Vol­ney, who was con­firmed yes­ter­day as the Op­po­si­tion's can­di­date for St Joseph, said if he is of­fered any pub­lic of­fice by Per­sad-Bisses­sar, he would, "in all hu­mil­i­ty, ac­cept." Asked how he would per­form as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, he re­tort­ed: "Much bet­ter than John Je­re­mie!" He stat­ed: "Er­ic Williams (T&T's first Prime Min­is­ter) could not hear and had the hu­mil­i­ty to buy a hear­ing aid. "Patrick Man­ning does not lis­ten and would not buy a hear­ing aid. "If he had lis­tened, the coun­try would not have been in the mess in which it is in."

Vol­ney said that there is "an al­most to­tal break­down of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem." He said the case list was get­ting longer and that, in many in­stances, ju­ries were let­ting crim­i­nals go free. He said if he be­comes a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, he would lis­ten to con­stituents.

"Many MPs do not lis­ten to the peo­ple," he chid­ed. Vol­ney said he had a sin­gle con­ver­sa­tion with UNC of­fi­cials–whom he did not iden­ti­fy –and af­ter that con­sult­ed fam­i­ly mem­bers about be­com­ing an elec­tion can­di­date. With "crunch time" get­ting close, he said he "took a leap of faith" and de­cid­ed to jump in­to the po­lit­i­cal fray.

He took the de­ci­sion, he said, af­ter de­liv­er­ing judg­ment in a crim­i­nal con­tempt mat­ter. "I need to bring light and I couldn't do that from the Bench," said 56-year-old Vol­ney. He stat­ed that he was not a mem­ber of UNC, and, in fact, he would not have been able to find par­ty head­quar­ters, Rien­zi Com­plex, at Cou­va, if he did not have di­rec­tions. Vol­ney termed the UNC "the on­ly ves­sel of change in the coun­try." The Guardian un­der­stands that Vol­ney was grilled for close to an hour by the UNC's screen­ing com­mit­tee.