To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

Notwith­stand­ing how the coali­tion leader at­tempts to sell it, there must be re­al con­cern when a sit­ting judge leaves the bench one day and the next day jumps right in­to the po­lit­i­cal are­na, with­out even "wash­ing his foot", as the good ole Tri­ni say­ing goes. Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie is ab­solute­ly right to ex­press con­cern that as Jus­tice Her­bert Vol­ney, he was ne­go­ti­at­ing his way in­to con­test­ing for a seat in the Par­lia­ment while he sat on the bench with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to dis­pense jus­tice fair­ly and trans­par­ent­ly to all. Al­so, ac­cord­ing to the news sto­ry in the Guardian Thurs­day, Jus­tice Vol­ney seemed to have en­gaged in a mea­sure of eva­sion when asked by the Pro­to­col Of­fi­cer of the Ju­di­cia­ry, Jones P Madeira, about re­ports that he was leav­ing and go­ing in­to pol­i­tics. More­over, ac­cord­ing to the re­port, Jus­tice Vol­ney was less than forth­com­ing when ques­tioned by Chief Jus­tice Archie about his in­ten­tions on leav­ing the Ju­di­cia­ry.

Ex­press­ing a view which must have res­o­nance in the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, CJ Archie notes that, "It is vi­tal that ju­di­cial of­fi­cers, in re­al­i­ty and in the per­cep­tion of the pub­lic, re­main in­de­pen­dent of po­lit­i­cal par­ties and the cut and thrust of na­tion­al pol­i­tics. To do oth­er­wise," the CJ states, "would be to com­pro­mise the in­de­pen­dence of the ju­di­cia­ry and the per­cep­tion of im­par­tial­i­ty that must be pre­served if the pub­lic is to have trust and con­fi­dence in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice." On that ba­sis the CJ right­ly con­cludes that it is "im­prop­er for a sit­ting judge to even en­ter­tain any pri­vate dis­cus­sion with any po­lit­i­cal par­ty or group." That is hard log­ic which can­not be eas­i­ly ex­plained away by talk about the cir­cum­stances of the coun­try be­ing so bad that it re­quires a judge to leave the bench for the po­lit­i­cal seat in the Par­lia­ment or else­where.

It is more than wor­ry­ing that UNC po­lit­i­cal leader, Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in her first com­ment on Vol­ney's de­ci­sive jump, could so eas­i­ly ac­cept and em­brace the prac­tice of a high court judge walk­ing in­to a po­lit­i­cal camp, and in­deed, hav­ing en­gaged in po­lit­i­cal mat­ters while he was still sworn to in­de­pen­dence and trans­paren­cy as a judge. This new po­si­tion comes in di­rect con­tra­dic­tion to the stance tak­en by the UNC when it al­leged that Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning and his gov­ern­ment had been ha­rass­ing and in­ter­fer­ing with Chief Jus­tice Sat Shar­ma. In ef­fect, the UNC ac­cused the Man­ning Gov­ern­ment of cross­ing the sep­a­rat­ing line be­tween the Ex­ec­u­tive and the ju­di­cia­ry.

The UNC leader has so far not com­mit­ted too many er­rors in guid­ing the coali­tion of par­ties to the polls. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, if as she seems to be in­di­cat­ing, that there is agree­ment to bring Vol­ney in­to the po­lit­i­cal are­na, this could be her first ma­jor er­ror which could have im­pli­ca­tions for her par­ty's chances for the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion. Un­like in the PNM where there is a dom­i­nant fig­ure who no one dares to con­tra­dict, the lead­ers of the oth­er el­e­ments of the coali­tion must demon­strate their strength and state their po­si­tion re­gard­ing this dan­ger­ous ad­ven­tur­ism. It may be good for Per­sad-Bisses­sar to demon­strate that she could ac­knowl­edge an er­ror with­out at­tempt­ing to spin it out of shape. Such an ac­knowl­edge­ment would al­so set her apart from the leader who she is now try­ing to re­place, a man who thinks he has the patent on be­ing right and nev­er ac­knowl­edg­ing er­ror.