Geisha Kow­lessar

The Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led ad­min­is­tra­tion has tak­en a "hit" re­gard­ing the Sec­tion 34 fi­as­co of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act, says po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Hamid Ghany. But the Prime Min­is­ter has tak­en the first step to cor­rect and re­store pub­lic con­fi­dence via the fir­ing of for­mer jus­tice min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney, Ghany added.

The con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing Sec­tion 34 sparked calls for Vol­ney to be re­moved. The out­cry was cre­at­ed be­cause the bill would have pro­vid­ed an av­enue for busi­ness­men Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh and Steve Fer­gu­son and oth­ers in the Pi­ar­co fraud case to es­cape pros­e­cu­tion.

In her ad­dress to the na­tion on Mon­day night, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Vol­ney mis­led the Cab­i­net with re­spect to the con­cur­rence and sup­port of the Chief Jus­tice and Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions for ear­ly procla­ma­tion of Sec­tion 34. "The Cab­i­net and Gov­ern­ment got a hit over this is­sue so what the Prime Min­is­ter did yes­ter­day (Thurs­day) was start of a process of try­ing to re­build that trust and con­fi­dence of the pub­lic and al­so the Gov­ern­ment," Ghany said in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

He said, how­ev­er, the ax­ing of Vol­ney re­flect­ed a much more se­ri­ous is­sues and called on the sys­tems as it re­lat­ed to good gov­er­nance and pub­lic con­fi­dence to be ex­am­ined. "Hav­ing tak­en this hit like this and hav­ing re­vealed what the Prime Min­is­ter did, it clear­ly shows there were fun­da­men­tal weak­ness­es in the sys­tem quite apart from the frail­ties of the hu­man mind which is an­oth­er is­sue in re­spect of the is­sue trust and ac­com­mo­da­tion and per­for­mance," he said.

"What we're see­ing here is a deep­er sce­nario with re­gard in the way in which our sys­tem op­er­ates," Say­ing that a num­ber of key peo­ple said they we not keep­ing abreast of the con­tro­ver­sy, Ghany ex­pressed sur­prised over such state­ment. "I heard Min­is­ter Ra­mad­har say per­haps Par­lia­ment was naive...I am very sur­prised at all this but I think it points to the fact that there are sys­temic weak­ness­es.

"The Prime Min­is­ter re­ferred to in her state­ment about a meet­ing with the Chief Jus­tice on Ju­ly 24 which in­di­cat­ed that they were talk­ing about procla­ma­tion at a lat­er time so that I think she cast the state­ments made by Mr Vol­ney to the Cab­i­net in the con­text of the fact that the on­ly thing they had from the Chief Jus­tice was a meet­ing on Ju­ly 24 which was point­ing to procla­ma­tion at a lat­er time," he said.