T&T Justice Minister shocked over firing

(Trinidad Express) Former justice minister Herbert Volney said yesterday he offered his resignation to Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and was shocked when he saw her on television Thursday night publicly announcing his dismissal.
He believes the Prime Minister was unjust to him and his family, saying, “I was thrown to the wolves with her (Persad-Bissessar) speech and it bore no reflection to our meeting that we had about an hour before her speech. … It was very hurtful. I came out the Judiciary and with six years left on the bench I sacrificed a lot but I would say now Lord forgive them for they know what they do. I forgive the Prime Minister because when I heard her speech I felt let down because I was dismissed without honour.”
Volney spoke to several media houses yesterday throughout the day from his Champs Fleurs home. He said he was no liar and in fact was the sacrificial lamb to quell the public outrage created by the early proclamation of Section 34 of the Administration of Justice (Indictable Proceedings) Act 2011.
Section 34 enabled persons who stand accused of an indictable offence such as businessmen Ishwar Galbaransingh and Steve Ferguson to apply to a judge to throw out a case if more than ten years had passed since the commission of the offence and if the trial had not yet started. The duo have applied to the court to be freed.
However, the Parliament moved swiftly to repeal the controversial section last week.
In breaking her silence on Thursday night, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar laid the blame for the fiasco squarely on Volney, saying he had misled the Cabinet when asked whether he consulted with the Chief Justice and Director of Public Prosecutions on the particular section.
Volney said yesterday there were others such as the DPP Roger Gaspard, Attorney General Anand Ramlogan and Legal Affairs Minister Prakash Ramadhar to blame for remaining silent on Section 34 as they had every opportunity to voice concerns.
Volney said on Thursday he met with the Prime Minister in the presence of National Security Minister Jack Warner and when the Prime Minister asked him to explain the early proclamation of Section 34, “I had answered her three times and it was clear to me that she was not accepting my answer. I immediately turned to her and I said, ‘Prime Minister, you are not accepting my answer, it means that I must now offer you the return of my Cabinet portfolio as Minister of Justice’.”
The Prime Minister, he said, did not accept his resignation but he thought she was going to publicly announce it as he had accepted that he made an error.
“I am very unhappy that I was fired because I can tell you, I offered my resignation as the fall guy because this thing happened though my ministry, and in true parliamentary system, I think that the proper thing for her to have done was to accept my resignation and not go afterwards and for me to see it on television with my wife and children present that I was fired. I had to keep my children from school today and I maintain that I have done no wrong. I lied to no one….”
Volney said Gaspard had every opportunity to say before that Galbaransingh and Ferguson and others stood to benefit from the early proclamation of the section but said nothing until after the act was done.
He said had Gaspard spoken earlier, “I would have prepared an Order amending the schedule and include in it the white collar crime, it was only after it was proclaimed, then the DPP came all sanctimonious as if he didn’t know … that is dereliction of duty, the DPP should answer that question, why did he sit on it.”
Volney said Ramadhar also stands accused as he acted as Justice Minister when the note came before him and he too remained silent.
“After Cabinet took that decision in early August for the approval of the Cabinet note to implement certain provisions on August 31 and the rest of the act on January 2, after that was taken, that was on the Thursday, on the Tuesday I left the country on vacation with my family and I was not in Cabinet when the Minister of Justice was acting, the Honourable Prakash Ramadhar who had expressed reservations on that same clause in the Parliament.
“It came up before him, he had the minute before him and he would have had to say confirmed, in other words that he was approving what was approved the week before because he was the acting Minister of Justice and the Attorney General was at that meeting,” Volney explained.
The AG, said Volney, sat right next to him in the Parliament when Section 34 was passed and said nothing and instead voted in support of it.
The amendment to the original version of Section 34—changing it from the date of charge to the date of offence—he said, was a proposal from the Justice Ministry which was accepted by the Senate and passed by the Parliament.
Why did he not go back and consult with the DPP and Chief Justice on the amended version of the section?
Volney said that he did not feel it was necessary, and this was his error.
“I thought that consultation on this issue had ended and that it was a matter for me to line up the ducks and giving an undertaking in Parliament to have everything in place, namely to appoint masters, prepare new rules etc and then I brought it to Parliament. Well if that is an error then it is,” he said.
“I did not think that it was necessary to go back to the Chief Justice after he had settled on a date (for the roll out of the act) and my error was that I did not do that, because I did not feel that there was a need to do it. I felt that the need was for me to now take the note to Cabinet, inform my Cabinet colleagues of the agreement with the Chief Justice of the roll out date of January 2, 2013 and for the proclamation to take effect on August 31st because the term, the session of the Parliament had opened and that certain provisions, certain sections of the act would have been proclaimed with effect from that date in order to allow for the creation of post of Master of the Supreme Court to sit in the criminal court as well as for the laying of the rules, because the Chief Justice had told me that the rules were almost ready. That was my error,” Volney said.
Volney said the only colleague to visit him since he was fired was Warner.
“He’s an honourable man. He said that he was on his way home and he passed in. He came and he lent me support. He was at the meeting with the Prime Minister and he know’s that I tendered by resignation,” said Volney.
—with reporting by Renuka Singh and Gyasi Gonzales