Ali­cia Llanos

In his first ap­pear­ance on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form re­tired High Court judge Her­bert Vol­ney last night ac­cused At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie of try­ing to un­der­mine the in­de­pen­dence of the Ju­di­cia­ry. A fiery Vol­ney said he had to leave the Ju­di­cia­ry to fight for its in­de­pen­dence. Vol­ney, speak­ing dur­ing a UNC po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in St Joseph last night, said he was moved by the holy spir­it. Speak­ing af­ter him Move­ment for So­cial Change can­di­date for Pointe-a-Pierre Er­rol McLeod de­scribed Vol­ney as "a hood­lum min­is­ter."

Dur­ing his speech, a num­ber of peo­ple ap­peared in the crowd hold­ing plac­ards ques­tion­ing his cred­i­bil­i­ty. The for­mer judge said they were Cepep work­ers who were paid by the PNM. "Let them do it. If they don't they will be fired," he said.

Vol­ney added: "That is the PNM way of deal­ing with it. They can't deal with the fire from Vol­ney... be­cause I speak with the holy spir­it." He claimed Je­re­mie was hav­ing State at­tor­neys "burn the mid­night oil" for the last three days to make out a case that he was still a judge and there­fore could not be a can­di­date for the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Vol­ney ac­cused Je­re­mie of mak­ing a false case against for­mer Chief Jus­tice Sat­nar­ine Shar­ma. He al­so said the case against Vi­jay Narayans­ingh and his wife, Seero­mani Maraj. for the mur­der of Narayans­ingh's for­mer wife Chan­dra was com­pro­mised.

"How could I per­son­al­ly stay in the ju­di­cia­ry and main­tain my in­de­pen­dence," he said. Vol­ney brought to the podi­um three items – a bunch of keys, his Trinidad and To­ba­go iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card and a rub­ber snake.

He said the keys sym­bol­ised the keys to the of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, the of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, the of­fice of Cul­ture Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald and the of­fice of the in­cum­bent St Joseph MP Kennedy Swarats­ingh. Vol­ney said the ser­pent rep­re­sent­ed Patrick Man­ning and the PNM. He said Man­ning and his min­ions must be con­fined to the po­lit­i­cal ceme­tery. He said the ID card was the most se­ri­ous of all the sym­bols. He said it proved he was a cit­i­zen and there­fore had rights. Vol­ney will be con­test­ing the St Joseph seat un­der the UNC.