In­stead of quelling the con­tro­ver­sy over an is­sue that strikes at the heart of this coun­try's democ­ra­cy, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's state­ment on Thurs­day night on the Sec­tion 34 de­ba­cle is like­ly to add fur­ther fu­el to the firestorm that sur­rounds the ear­ly procla­ma­tion of the con­tentious clause.

First­ly, the Prime Min­is­ter went out of her way to stress the shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Par­lia­ment in the ini­tial pas­sage of the leg­is­la­tion-mak­ing the point on no few­er than sev­en oc­ca­sions in the first third of her speech that Sec­tion 34 "would nev­er have been pro­claimed at any time had it not been unan­i­mous­ly ap­proved in the Par­lia­ment and the Sen­ate with­out a sin­gle ab­sten­tion or dis­sent­ing voice."

She spent the last third of her speech ar­gu­ing that Her­bert Vol­ney, whom she fired as her Min­is­ter of Jus­tice on Thurs­day, was guilty of "se­ri­ous mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion" that "amounts to ma­te­r­i­al non-dis­clo­sure of rel­e­vant facts to the Cab­i­net which ef­fec­tive­ly pre­vent­ed it from mak­ing an in­formed de­ci­sion" in claim­ing that the Chief Jus­tice and the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions sup­port­ed the ear­ly procla­ma­tion of the law.

While con­ced­ing that her Cab­i­net was so mis­led, the Prime Min­is­ter failed to al­low that the en­tire Par­lia­ment-in­clud­ing the elect­ed op­po­si­tion Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment and the in­de­pen­dent and op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tors-may sim­i­lar­ly have been mis­led by this "ma­te­r­i­al non-dis­clo­sure of rel­e­vant facts" by Mr Vol­ney.

The Prime Min­is­ter went as far as to charge that it was Par­lia­ment, in its col­lec­tive wis­dom, "that gave birth to Sec­tion 34." But while Par­lia­ment may tech­ni­cal­ly have giv­en birth to the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act, the leg­is­la­tion was con­ceived nine months pre­vi­ous­ly in No­vem­ber 2011, when the bill was tabled in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley, on his Face­book page yes­ter­day, as­sert­ed that the leg­is­la­tion was laid in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for its first read­ing just four days af­ter High Court judge Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh's judg­ment in the ex­tra­di­tion case of Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh and Steve Fer­gu­son, two men who have nev­er hid­den the fact that they have been fi­nanciers of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

In that judg­ment, Boodoos­ingh cleared the way for Gal­barans­ingh and Fer­gu­son to be tried lo­cal­ly, rather than ex­tra­dit­ed to the US, ar­gu­ing that the lo­cal courts were the ap­pro­pri­ate fo­rum for them to face jus­tice. Ms Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­tend­ed on Thurs­day that the leg­is­la­tion "tar­get­ed no par­tic­u­lar per­sons; it was not de­signed to pro­tect any sec­tion­al in­ter­ests."

She al­so re­ject­ed and dis­missed the idea that Sec­tion 34 "was passed as part of some grand con­spir­a­cy de­signed to ben­e­fit cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als." The Prime Min­is­ter may well be right. On the oth­er hand, it is be­yond dis­pute that lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Mr Gal­barans­ingh and Mr Fer­gu­son pe­ti­tioned the High Court on Sep­tem­ber 10, seek­ing to have the many cor­rup­tion charges against them thrown out on the ba­sis of Sec­tion 34, which had been pro­claimed by Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards a mere six work­ing days ear­li­er.

It can al­so be ar­gued that had this sto­ry not ex­plod­ed in­to the pub­lic's con­scious­ness in the way that it did, the lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the two men would have had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to make their sub­mis­sions that they were en­ti­tled to ben­e­fit from the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion be­cause of the length of time their cas­es have dragged through the lo­cal ju­di­cial sys­tem.

It was the pub­lic scruti­ny and the en­su­ing con­tro­ver­sy-pos­si­bly the worst in the frac­tious 29 months of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion-which forced the Gov­ern­ment to re­voke the clause, a move Ms Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­serves some cred­it for in­sti­gat­ing. Thurs­day's com­ments have al­so placed a glar­ing spot­light on the col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of Cab­i­net, which was at its worst in this mat­ter.

In the cir­cum­stances, re­liev­ing Her­bert Vol­ney of his Jus­tice Min­istry port­fo­lio doesn't go far enough to re­solve this mat­ter. The ques­tion, yet unan­swered: is what was Mr Vol­ney's mo­ti­va­tion to dupe his Cab­i­net col­leagues in­to agree­ing to the Au­gust 31 procla­ma­tion? The ques­tion should al­so be asked whether he was the on­ly one cul­pa­ble in this mat­ter. There are many ques­tions for the Prime Min­is­ter to an­swer and is­sues for her to ad­dress on this mat­ter and the Gov­ern­ment needs to con­sid­er how it can bring more ac­count­abil­i­ty to this is­sue.