Rose­marie Sant

Judges of both the Supreme and Ap­peal Courts are said to be up­set over the de­ci­sion by Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie to pro­ceed on an ad­di­tion­al six-week va­ca­tion and are de­mand­ing an­swers about the “type’ of leave he has pro­ceed­ed on.

Archie left the coun­try last week­end. In his ab­sence, Jus­tice Al­lan Men­don­ca will act as Chief Jus­tice from May 19t-June 7, when Men­don­ca him­self will be out of the coun­try.

Ap­peal Court Judge Al­ice Yorke Soo Hon will act from June 8-17 and Men­don­ca will act again from June 18-29-. Archie is due to re­turn to of­fice on June 30.

In an email to judges, Archie’s ad­min­is­tra­tive sec­re­tary Shabi­ki Caz­abon said the CJ would be out of the ju­ris­dic­tion from May 19-June 30 to con­tin­ue his va­ca­tion leave cut short by the death of his moth­er.

The T&T Guardian was told mem­bers of the Ju­di­cia­ry and “even those in the Court of Ap­peal,” are “very an­gry” at the leave. By their cal­cu­la­tion, Archie is on­ly en­ti­tled to a fur­ther two weeks.

“We are very up­set, no­body un­der­stands the leave,” the judges said.

One an­gry mem­ber of the Ju­di­cia­ry told the T&T Guardian, “It is time for mem­bers of the Court of Ap­peal to stand up for what is right and bring an end to this. The Court of Ap­peal has to say the Ju­di­cia­ry can­not take this.”

Last No­vem­ber, Archie ap­plied for six months sab­bat­i­cal leave which was ap­proved by then-pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona. But that leave was scut­tled af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley raised ques­tions about the au­thor­i­ty for it af­ter he re­ceived a re­quest for Jus­tice Al­lan Men­don­ca to act as CJ in Archie’s ab­sence. The rec­om­men­da­tion for sab­bat­i­cal leave was con­tained in the 98th re­port of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion but not ap­proved by the Par­lia­ment. An in­ter­pre­ta­tion sum­mons filed by the state on the mat­ter will be heard in June.

Archie then an­nounced he was tak­ing va­ca­tion leave and left the coun­try in March. He re­turned re­cent­ly fol­low­ing the death of his moth­er, but flew out again last week­end on va­ca­tion leave.

Yes­ter­day, with ques­tions swirling in the pub­lic do­main about the ad­di­tion­al six weeks leave, le­gal sources called on Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes to “clear the air” and tell the coun­try “what is the na­ture of the leave which was ap­proved and where did it come from?”

They added that it’s not “good enough” for Weekes to say this leave was ap­proved by the for­mer pres­i­dent.

Is­rael Khan SC de­fend­ed Weekes, say­ing if the leave had been ap­proved by her pre­de­ces­sor “she had lit­tle choice in the mat­ter.”

Khan told the Guardian it is open to in­ter­pre­ta­tion that the leave which Archie had em­barked on was “sab­bat­i­cal leave,” but ques­tioned how as CJ he could pro­ceed on such leave giv­en the mat­ter is now be­fore the court for in­ter­pre­ta­tion. He said “un­til the court in­ter­prets the sum­mons as to whether he is en­ti­tled to sab­bat­i­cal leave or not, the sta­tus quo re­mains”. How­ev­er, he said, “The CJ ought not to take that leave un­til the court de­cides.”

He said the Pres­i­dent “could have stepped out of her crease and said she was await­ing the court’s rul­ing on the in­ter­pre­ta­tion sum­mons, but giv­en that the leave had been ap­proved by the for­mer pres­i­dent she want­ed to be ob­jec­tive and not take sides.”

How­ev­er, Khan said it was pass­ing strange that nowhere was it men­tioned that the CJ’s orig­i­nal six-week va­ca­tion leave was bro­ken be­cause of his moth­er’s fu­ner­al.