Gail Alexan­der

Deep con­cerns voiced by the ju­di­cia­ry yes­ter­day morn­ing prompt­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar last night to dis­tance her­self–far away–from re­cent state­ments made by her Jus­tice Min­is­ter, Her­bert Vol­ney, about Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie. The ju­di­cia­ry fired off a state­ment yes­ter­day ac­cus­ing ex-judge Vol­ney of mis­lead­ing the com­mu­ni­ty and al­so of slan­der against Archie and the ju­di­cia­ry as a whole, in re­cent re­marks about Archie. The ju­di­cia­ry's state­ment fol­lowed Vol­ney's claims in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives dur­ing last Thurs­day's bud­get de­bate when Vol­ney took is­sue with Archie and for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al John Je­re­mie. Vol­ney ac­cused Je­re­mie of "in­volv­ing him­self" in the ju­di­cia­ry, al­leg­ing there was a "sweet­heart" deal be­tween Je­re­mie and Archie on a house.

The ju­di­cia­ry stat­ed among its con­tentions yes­ter­day that "Not for the first time since his overnight re­tire­ment as a judge of the Supreme Court and his si­mul­ta­ne­ous en­try in­to lo­cal pol­i­tics, Mr Her­bert Vol­ney has launched a scur­rilous and defam­a­to­ry at­tack on the of­fice of the Chief Jus­tice and the ju­di­cia­ry as a whole, on­ly on this more re­cent oc­ca­sion he has done so un­der the cov­er of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege." On Vol­ney's claims of the al­leged "deal," the state­ment not­ed: "This, at best, is in­tend­ed to mis­lead the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty over a con­di­tion of ser­vice to which the Chief Jus­tice and judges of the coun­try are statu­to­ri­ly en­ti­tled, and at worse, a patent slan­der against both the of­fice of the Chief Jus­tice and the Ju­di­cia­ry of T&T as a whole."

"Mr Vol­ney al­so im­putes im­prop­er con­duct on the part of the Ho­n­ourable the Chief Jus­tice, the hold­er of the third high­est of­fice in the na­tion, when, in the same con­tri­bu­tion, he sug­gests cor­rup­tion and col­lu­sion be­tween the Ho­n­ourable the Chief Jus­tice and a for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al." The ju­di­cia­ry's state­ment point­ed out: "When a min­is­ter speaks on be­half of the gov­ern­ment dur­ing a Par­lia­men­tary de­bate, he is pre­sumed to be putting for­ward the col­lec­tive views and po­si­tion of the ex­ec­u­tive, un­less there is an ex­pressed con­trary in­ten­tion or dis­claimer. "Ac­cord­ing­ly, the ju­di­cia­ry will be in­ter­est­ed in know­ing whether the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter, Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in­tends to dis­as­so­ci­ate her­self and her gov­ern­ment from the bla­tant un­truths and high­ly of­fen­sive in­nu­en­does against the Ho­n­ourable Chief Jus­tice ar­tic­u­lat­ed by Mr Vol­ney dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the bud­get de­bate."

The ju­di­cia­ry's state­ment ex­plained how premis­es were ob­tained for Archie, not­ing Je­re­mie was not At­tor­ney Gen­er­al when Archie moved in­to rec­om­mend­ed prop­er­ty at Good­wood Park. The ju­di­cia­ry re­pu­di­at­ed and con­demned as "reck­less" (sic) Vol­ney's sug­ges­tion that Je­re­mie was covert­ly un­der­min­ing the in­de­pen­dence of the ju­di­cia­ry with the ac­qui­es­cence of Archie. The ju­di­cia­ry stressed that "slan­der notwith­stand­ing," (sic) Archie nor the wider in­sti­tu­tion "is in­tim­i­dat­ed by Vol­ney's scan­dalous vi­tu­per­a­tion" and will con­tin­ue to deep­en col­lab­o­ra­tion with all jus­tice sec­tor agen­cies and rel­e­vant min­istries to pur­sue shared goals. Hours lat­er, by 6 pm, Per­sad-Bisses­sar's of­fice is­sued a state­ment in which the PM not­ed that she and oth­er Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship mem­bers had come "to the de­fence of the rule and law and were strong pro­po­nents in the ju­di­cia­ry's in­de­pen­dence."

In this con­text, Per­sad-Bisses­sar, an at­tor­ney, said she con­sid­ered Vol­ney's state­ments as: "Un­for­tu­nate and un­nec­es­sary but may have been in the con­text of a first time (sic) bud­get de­bate for the ho­n­ourable min­is­ter and there­fore may have been sim­ply over-en­thu­si­as­tic." The state­ment added: "The ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter wish­es to fur­ther re­in­force the fact that the views ex­pressed by Min­is­ter Vol­ney re­flect his per­son­al opin­ion and in NO WAY (sic) is the of­fi­cial po­si­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter or the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment re­gard­ing its per­cep­tion, at­ti­tude or pol­i­cy con­cern­ing the ju­di­cial arm of the state and in­deed the ho­n­ourable Chief Jus­tice him­self."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar not­ed that Vol­ney's con­tri­bu­tion had stat­ed in­tent to con­sult with the Chief Jus­tice on the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice, "there­by recog­nis­ing him­self, the in­de­pen­dence of the ju­di­cia­ry and the ne­ces­si­ty for his min­istry to give this body its full co-op­er­a­tion and due re­spect."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar em­pha­sised that her Gov­ern­ment "un­der­stands the im­por­tance and val­ue of a good work­ing re­la­tion­ship with the ju­di­cia­ry." The sit­u­a­tion erupt­ed on the eve of Per­sad-Bisses­sar's de­par­ture for the US to­day.

Vol­ney Mum

Jus­tice Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney did not re­ply yes­ter­day to re­peat­ed calls on the re­spec­tive po­si­tions of the ju­di­cia­ry or his boss, the Prime Min­is­ter. Nor did At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan or Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har re­spond­ed on the is­sue. How­ev­er, PNM's Colm Im­bert said: "I'm glad the Prime Min­is­ter has al­lowed good sense to pre­vail rather than choos­ing to stub­born­ly try de­fend­ing the in­de­fen­si­ble. "She should have dealt with the mat­ter at the time it oc­curred in Par­lia­ment rather than have it come to this where you have the ju­di­cia­ry call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to take ac­tion against its min­is­ter," he said.

"The Prime Min­is­ter should have in­ter­vened im­me­di­ate­ly dur­ing the de­bate–she's a very ex­pe­ri­enced MP should have known Vol­ney was out of or­der."

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley was un­avail­able. Dur­ing de­bate, Im­bert said for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Bridgid An­nisette-George held the post of AG when Archie was ap­point­ed Chief Jus­tice–and not John Je­re­mie as Vol­ney claimed. Im­bert con­demned Vol­ney for us­ing Par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege to at­tack the ju­di­cia­ry.