Defending the Indefensible...

In an interview with Hema Ramkissoon last Thursday morning, disgraced former Justice Minister Herbert Volney told the nation that, where Section 34 was concerned, the buck stopped with him. That he then went on to blame COP political leader Prakash Ramadhar, the Chief Justice, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Parliament, the Opposition and the entire Cabinet showed that the buck apparently stopped with a lot of other people as well. Appearing increasingly animated as the interviewer's questions deviated from the (his) 'history righting' script, his answers exposed major flaws in his stated position that the contentious Section 34 was proclaimed early to facilitate preparations and roll out and to allow for the opening of the new law term, but could not explain why it was done in the dead of night on a long weekend. When pressed as to this reason he could not answer as to why it could not have been done soberly on the following Tuesday morning after the holiday, when there was clearly enough time as evidenced by the sufficiency of time for the reaction to the public outcry, debate of the Section in both Houses of Parliament and the repeal of the same section well before the same ceremonial opening.

Risking loss of control of 'his' interview, he then attempted to deflect the entire responsibility onto the Congress of the People's political leader and Minister of Legal Affairs Prakash Ramadhar but he could not say why, and the viewers were treated to a rambling prediction of the COP wanting to go there own way eventually, which had nothing to do with the substantive issue at hand, begging the question as to what was his intention on the show in the first place. Caught in lies that  appeared  constructed to cover previous lies, the entire interview degenerated into a waste of everyone's time and the only things now known with any more certainty is that this man CLEARLY cannot be trusted, not with public office and certainly not with the truth.

The major questions remain - Why was Section 34 proclaimed surreptitiously and who was responsible? Why were white collar crimes omitted from Schedule 6 (the list that governed the exempted crimes) despite clear guidance to that end by the DPP? What did he (Volney) mean when, immediately after being fired that the nation needed to save the Prime Minister from Attorney General Anand Ramlogan? Save her in what way and from what? Asked if any laws were broken by the entire fiasco he said sotto voice not at all, yet he was fired from his post for having responsibility for that nothing.

There is obviously a lot more here than he or any of his other co-conspirators are willing to admit at this time and that simply cannot be good enough. As the timeline suggests that the Attorney General was aware at the time of the Ish and Steve appeal against extradition matter that Section 34 was in the pipeline, did he not have a responsibility as the state's chief counsel to make sure that the court was also aware of this fact? If the Attorney General is proved to be complicit in any way in any conspiracy to pervert the course of Justice, can the decisions that were made based on his actions and recommendations be reversed? There is no escaping the obvious question, if the court was aware at the time that a loophole such as Section 34 was coming and that it would have made any chance of the defendants facing a local court highly unlikely, would the court have ruled differently? As this matter has the potential to smear reputations and bring the entire justice system into disrepute I think it is time that the Chief Justice got involved and illuminated the best way forward from here. Had the extradition order not been quashed the defendants would have been sent to answer the standing indictments and if justice is to be served in this matter those same defendants must not benefit from a corrupting of the process. Justice may be blind but she is not stupid. What took place here was an attack against reason, truth and justice itself.