Ju­ly 30, 2013

Mr. Dave Tan­coo,

Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary,

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress,

Rien­zi Com­plex,

COU­VA

Dear Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary,

Last night on live na­tion­al tele­vi­sion I heard the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter and Leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress state that her gov­ern­ment was still as­sured of the sup­port of twen­ty six and pos­si­bly twen­ty sev­en Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment. I un­der­stood that to be a mes­sage to me that the Prime Min­is­ter and Po­lit­i­cal Leader has no in­ter­est in keep­ing me in the fold of her gov­ern­ment.

Since my un­just dis­missal from her gov­ern­ment, the Prime Min­is­ter has done noth­ing to re-en­gage me with any rel­e­vance in her ad­min­is­tra­tion and has as Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress equal­ly made no at­tempt to in­clude me in any form or fash­ion giv­en that I re­main a mem­ber of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and one of its mem­bers of Par­lia­ment.

In April 2010 I was ap­proached by the lead­er­ship of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress to join it in the strug­gle to re­turn good gov­ern­ment to Trinidad and To­ba­go and to con­tribute to­wards crime in­ter­dic­tion, crim­i­nal jus­tice and of­fend­er man­age­ment re­form set out in the then draft man­i­festo of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship. I made the per­son­al sac­ri­fice of opt­ing for ear­ly re­tire­ment as the se­nior judge of the crim­i­nal courts in or­der to join the strug­gle for peace, bread and jus­tice in our land. I cam­paigned on a plat­form of re­turn­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go to a sense of nor­mal­cy in pub­lic or­der by in­ter­dic­tion of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty through the Speed­i­er Jus­tice Ini­tia­tive. The elec­torate in the swing con­stituen­cy of St. Joseph with no more than five thou­sand com­mit­ted Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress sup­port­ers gave me 10,835 votes and over­whelm­ing­ly re­turned me as their Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment.

As the Min­is­ter of Jus­tice I faith­ful­ly en­gi­neered crim­i­nal jus­tice and of­fend­er man­age­ment re­form both in pol­i­cy de­vel­op­ment and in statu­to­ry in­ter­ven­tions like nev­er be­fore. I caused to be de­vel­oped pro­to­type draw­ings for pre­sen­ta­tion to, and re­ceived Cab­i­net ap­proval for the con­struc­tion of ju­di­cial cen­ters across Trinidad and To­ba­go. I suc­cess­ful­ly sought and ob­tained the trans­fer of the Prison Ser­vice to the Min­istry of Jus­tice. I helped es­tab­lish Rise Prison Ra­dio. In the cir­cum­stances my ter­mi­na­tion as Min­is­ter of Jus­tice and in the cru­el way it was done was a clear in­di­ca­tion to me that im­prop­er po­lit­i­cal mo­tives en­gen­dered my in­vi­ta­tion in­to the UNC and the part­ner­ship plat­form.

Put blunt­ly, I was used for my in­tegri­ty on the cam­paign plat­form to help in its elec­toral suc­cess and when it be­came a prob­lem to the cor­rup­tion, crony­ism, nepo­tism and oli­garchic au­to­crat­ic rule that was to fol­low, I was ter­mi­nat­ed from the gov­ern­ment. I was used and abused for the po­lit­i­cal pur­pos­es of the po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress. The fi­nal in­sult of the Po­lit­i­cal Leader in­sin­u­at­ing that I was not in her twen­ty six or twen­ty sev­en mem­bers un­der­scores the need to sev­er ties where I am no longer rec­og­nized for my con­tri­bu­tion and where I have be­come un­wel­come.

I ac­cord­ing­ly re­sign with im­me­di­ate ef­fect from mem­ber­ship of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and re­quest that you al­ter your mem­ber­ship roll to re­flect my ter­mi­na­tion with the par­ty.

I thank the Po­lit­i­cal Leader and the Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to car­ry the ban­ner of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress. I did my best for the par­ty and for the gov­ern­ment. I will con­tin­ue to serve my con­stituents from the Par­lia­ment, and I will con­tin­ue to serve the na­tion.

As for you, Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary, I have al­ways been touched by your sin­cer­i­ty and thank you for it.

Please be guid­ed ac­cord­ing­ly,

HER­BERT VOL­NEY

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for St. Joseph

cc Mrs. Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Po­lit­i­cal Leader, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress

Ms. Khadi­ja Ameen, Act­ing Chair­man Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress