Richard Lord

St Joseph MP Her­bert Vol­ney will for­mal­ly va­cate the seat on Mon­day with­out any le­gal chal­lenge to House Speak­er Wade Mark de­c­la­ra­tion of his seat va­cant last week Mon­day, clear­ing the way for a by-elec­tion in ear­ly De­cem­ber. Vol­ney walked out of Par­lia­ment af­ter Mark de­clared the seat be va­cat­ed on Sep­tem­ber 9, fol­low­ing his de­ci­sion to re­sign as a mem­ber of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress. He had 14 days from then to chal­lenge the Speak­er's de­ci­sion.

He had ini­tial­ly stat­ed he would com­mence le­gal ac­tion against the Speak­er but has now de­cid­ed against such ac­tion be­cause he had no in­ten­tion of play­ing any role again in elec­toral pol­i­tics. A re­lease yes­ter­day by the con­stituen­cy of­fice man­ag­er, Mark Dols­ingh, said the seat "will ac­cord­ing­ly be va­cat­ed on Mon­day Sep­tem­ber 23, 2013, a day of in­famy for the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic way of life of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go."

Dols­ingh said Vol­ney main­tained his dis­agree­ment with the Speak­er's rul­ing. He said Vol­ney sought and ob­tained the ad­vice of Se­nior Coun­sel who have of­fered the opin­ion that there was a strong jus­ti­cia­ble cause against the Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to chal­lenge and up­set his rul­ing. The re­lease said: "This is a mat­ter of great con­sti­tu­tion­al im­por­tance.

The ac­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter and the Speak­er has up­set the le­git­i­mate elec­tion and tenure of the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for St Joseph oth­er than by the pop­u­lar ex­pres­sion of the will of the peo­ple." It added it was not Vol­ney's re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to cor­rect the rul­ing, "giv­en his de­sire not to con­tin­ue in elec­toral pol­i­tics." It said that was "a cause for civ­il so­ci­ety and the law bod­ies to take up."

Dols­ingh said Mark's rul­ing "not on­ly ef­fec­tive­ly un­seats an elect­ed mem­ber but serves to dis­crim­i­nate in its out­reach against mem­bers with a leader of a par­ty in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and mem­bers with­out such a leader in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives."

The state­ment con­firmed that Vol­ney no longer want­ed to "oblige lit­i­ga­tion in the High Court for sev­er­al rea­sons, in­clud­ing the high cost of lit­i­ga­tion, the per­pet­u­a­tion of State-spon­sored po­lit­i­cal ridicule and ha­rass­ment by sup­port­ers of the Gov­ern­ment and the ab­sence of ac­cess to the ap­pel­late ju­ris­dic­tion of the Privy Coun­cil or the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice."

Ac­cord­ing to Dols­ingh, Vol­ney was grate­ful to con­stituents of St Joseph "for their sup­port and joins prayer­ful­ly for the elec­tion of a wor­thy suc­ces­sor." Vol­ney, a for­mer High Court judge, was elect­ed MP for St Joseph on May 24, 2010 and was ap­point­ed Jus­tice Min­is­ter.

He was sacked last year af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter said he mis­led the Cab­i­net about his con­sul­ta­tion with Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard on the ear­ly procla­ma­tion of Sec­tion 34 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Bill, 2011.

That pro­vi­sion, which has since been re­pealed, cre­at­ed an amnesty for peo­ple who had crim­i­nal cas­es pend­ing for ten years and more and was wide­ly seen as ben­e­fit­ting UNC fi­nanciers charged in the Pi­ar­co Air­port cor­rup­tion case. Vol­ney re­signed from the UNC in Ju­ly and joined the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty, which is led by Jack Warn­er.