Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning is dis­miss­ing it, but yes­ter­day sev­er­al le­gal ob­servers re­called his nom­i­na­tion of Jus­tice An­tho­ny Lucky to serve as Pres­i­dent of the re­pub­lic. The le­gal purists did so in the con­text of Jus­tice Her­bert Vol­ney's shock de­ci­sion to re­tire from the ju­di­cia­ry and im­me­di­ate­ly seek nom­i­na­tion as a UNC gen­er­al elec­tion can­di­date. Man­ning has said that Vol­ney's move goes against the face of the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers doc­trine.

One se­nior coun­sel yes­ter­day re­mem­bered that Man­ning had sought to have Lucky made Head of State at the time when the UNC, then in of­fice, had nom­i­nat­ed Arthur NR Robin­son. Robin­son was elect­ed by the Elec­toral Col­lege, made up of all Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment and Sen­a­tors. Lucky was then a sit­ting High Court judge. Af­ter he failed to be­come Pres­i­dent, he re­turned to the bench. Le­gal fig­ures al­so not­ed that Lucky's daugh­ter, Gillian Lucky, moved from ac­tive pol­i­tics to serv­ing as a High Court judge. Lucky, a for­mer MP for Pointe-a-Pierre, is close to the end of a six-month term as a judge.