Fran­cis Joseph

Jus­tice Her­bert Vol­ney was due in the San Fer­nan­do High Court yes­ter­day for a cause list hear­ing. He did not turn up and Jus­tice An­tho­ny Car­mona had to do the need­ful. In­stead, Vol­ney was dis­patch­ing let­ters to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards and Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie, let­ting them know that he had re­signed from the Bench, which he had served since Ju­ly 27, 1994. A for­mer pros­e­cu­tor in the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), Vol­ney has gone from one arm of gov­ern­ment, the ju­di­cia­ry, hop­ing to get in­to the next arm, the leg­is­la­ture.

At 3.30 pm to­day, all eyes will be on Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va, where Vol­ney is due to be screened by the screen­ing com­mit­tee of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) for the St Joseph seat. He comes up against for­mer UNC MP, In­dera Sage­wan-Al­li, and for­mer min­is­ter, Dr Car­son Charles, who held that seat dur­ing the NAR term in of­fice. For the past two weeks, there were ru­mours that Vol­ney was leav­ing the ju­di­cia­ry to en­ter pol­i­tics. But ru­mours are noth­ing new around Vol­ney. Months ago, ru­mours cir­cu­lat­ed that he was leav­ing the ju­di­cia­ry to take up a post in the Ba­hamas, af­ter the de­par­ture of his good friend, Jus­tice Stan­ley John.

In the Sun­day Guardian edi­tion of April 18, un­der the head­line, "Dooks for Pres­i­dent," it was stat­ed that Prakash Ra­mad­har would be the can­di­date for St Au­gus­tine, and a lead­ing mem­ber of the le­gal pro­fes­sion would be fight­ing a seat for the UNC. That was Vol­ney, hav­ing been ap­proached by a top-rank­ing mem­ber of the UNC on be­half of po­lit­i­cal leader, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Sources close to Vol­ney said the judge start­ed to think about the of­fer, say­ing to them that he had no fu­ture in the ju­di­cia­ry, and in par­tic­u­lar, no chance of reach­ing the Court of Ap­peal.

Sources said Vol­ney be­gan think­ing about his fu­ture, and de­cid­ed last week, to leave the ju­di­cia­ry to con­test the St Joseph seat for the UNC. If Vol­ney wins and the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship de­feats the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), it could see the for­mer judge step­ping off the Bench and en­ter­ing the of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. Once Vol­ney is suc­cess­ful in to­day's screen­ing ex­er­cise, he will be pre­sent­ed, along with the oth­er 40 can­di­dates in the coali­tion, at a mega launch at the Mid Cen­tre Mall car park, Ch­agua­nas, on Sun­day.

CJ con­demns judge's ac­tion

Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie says he is con­cerned that one of his sit­ting judges, Jus­tice Her­bert Vol­ney, might have been en­gag­ing in ne­go­ti­a­tions with a po­lit­i­cal par­ty. Hours af­ter Vol­ney ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion in or­der to be­come a can­di­date for the UNC in the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion, Archie ac­cept­ed the res­ig­na­tion and ad­vised Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards of the shock de­ci­sion. Vol­ney, who had been a judge for more than 15 years, is ex­pect­ed to fight the St Joseph seat. Yes­ter­day, he de­liv­ered let­ters to both Archie and Richards. But the res­ig­na­tion has clear­ly up­set Archie, who ac­cord­ing to re­ports, had been try­ing since Mon­day to ver­i­fy ru­mours that one of his judges was con­sid­er­ing en­ter­ing the po­lit­i­cal are­na.

A state­ment is­sued from CJ Archie's of­fice yes­ter­day said that on Mon­day, "re­ports be­gan to sur­face that Jus­tice Vol­ney might be leav­ing the Bench to en­ter pol­i­tics." The state­ment added: "En­quiries from the me­dia and oth­er sources both with­in and ex­ter­nal to the ju­di­cia­ry to Mr Jones Madeira, Court Pro­to­col and In­for­ma­tion Man­ag­er, were brought to the at­ten­tion of Mr Jus­tice Vol­ney, who cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­nied that there was any sub­stance to them." The state­ment said that by Tues­day, "the re­ports had be­come more in­sis­tent and the Chief Jus­tice sum­moned Mr Jus­tice Vol­ney, in­tend­ing to speak to him about those re­ports and oth­er re­marks the judge had made from the Bench that had been re­cent­ly re­port­ed in the print me­dia.

"At that meet­ing, Mr Jus­tice Vol­ney in­di­cat­ed that it was his in­ten­tion to demit of­fice by the end of April 2010, but de­clined to con­firm any post-res­ig­na­tion plans rel­a­tive to en­ter­ing pol­i­tics, ad­vis­ing the Ho­n­ourable the Chief Jus­tice in­stead that he wished to keep his op­tions open," the state­ment said. "The Chief Jus­tice re­it­er­at­ed at that stage that, con­trary to Mr Jus­tice Vol­ney's view, it was very much a mat­ter of con­cern to the Chief Jus­tice and the ju­di­cia­ry that a sit­ting judge might have been en­gag­ing in ne­go­ti­a­tions with a po­lit­i­cal par­ty. "The dis­cus­sion end­ed with no clear in­di­ca­tion of the judge's fu­ture plans, but with a promise from him that he would ten­der his res­ig­na­tion by to­day (April 28, 2010).

"In those cir­cum­stances, the Chief Jus­tice had no op­tion oth­er than to in­di­cate that he would ac­cept the res­ig­na­tion once it was prof­fered, which should be as soon as pos­si­ble, and to con­firm that the judge would cease to per­form any ju­di­cial du­ties from April 28, 2010. "The Ho­n­ourable the Chief Jus­tice has ad­vised His Ex­cel­len­cy the Pres­i­dent ac­cord­ing­ly." Archie recog­nised that the is­sue of a sit­ting judge en­ter­ing pol­i­tics was one of pub­lic con­cern and im­por­tance, and, there­fore, deemed it nec­es­sary to em­pha­sise the prin­ci­ples by which judges ought to gov­ern their con­duct in this re­gard. "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," he said.

"To do oth­er­wise would 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. "Ac­cord­ing­ly, it would be whol­ly im­prop­er for a sit­ting judge to even en­ter­tain any pri­vate dis­cus­sion with any po­lit­i­cal par­ty or group"