Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ad­dress on Thurs­day night and the con­tro­ver­sial dis­missal of Her­bert Vol­ney as Min­ster of Jus­tice leaves the coun­try in a state of "un­cer­tain­ty." The Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions (Fi­tun) said so in a state­ment yes­ter­day. It added: "In fact the PM's state­ment has raised more ques­tions for us and leaves us with a sense of grim un­cer­tain­ty about what the next 'mis­step' will be. "First­ly the PM failed to ad­e­quate­ly ex­plain the rea­son for the de­layed re­sponse. Are we to be­lieve that Mr Vol­ney on­ly ad­mit­ted cul­pa­bil­i­ty on Thurs­day 20th Sep­tem­ber as stat­ed in the PM's speech where she stat­ed 'I held a for­mal and can­did meet­ing with Min­is­ter Vol­ney to­day who has ad­mit­ted that he erred?'"

Last Thurs­day, the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced the dis­missal of jus­tice min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney, ac­cus­ing him of "se­ri­ous mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion" to the Cab­i­net in re­la­tion to a note in which he re­quest­ed the ear­ly procla­ma­tion ap­proval of Sec­tion 34 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act on Au­gust 9. Fi­tun's state­ment said it was a "damn­ing rev­e­la­tion" that the Prime Min­is­ter had failed to un­der­stand why the na­tion was out­raged over the is­sue. It said: "It is the fail­ure of the Prime Min­is­ter to un­der­stand why the pop­u­la­tion would be out­raged by Cab­i­net usurp­ing the au­thor­i­ty of the Par­lia­ment. "Why didn't any mem­ber of the Cab­i­net say that we ought not to ap­prove on the ba­sis that the Par­lia­ment had ap­proved an al­ter­na­tive se­quence for procla­ma­tion? "Sec­tion 75 (1) of the Con­sti­tu­tion reads as fol­lows: 'There shall be a Cab­i­net for Trinidad and To­ba­go which shall have the gen­er­al di­rec­tion and con­trol of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and shall be col­lec­tive­ly re­spon­si­ble there­fore to Par­lia­ment.'" Fi­tun al­so reaf­firmed its en­dorse­ment of the call by the Joint Trade Union Move­ment for the re­moval of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Anand Ram­lo­gan.