Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie was the sub­ject of an ear­li­er than usu­al ole mas pre­sen­ta­tion out­side the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

Around 2 pm, 10 mas­quer­aders dressed in plas­tic repli­cas of judges' robes and armed with plac­ards, be­gan a staged protest on the steps of the en­trance to the Ju­di­cia­ry's head­quar­ters.

The plac­ards bore slo­gans re­lat­ed to pub­lic al­le­ga­tions made against Archie as well as crit­i­cism of the Ju­di­cia­ry, in­clud­ing "Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Con­fu­sion." Most of the slo­gans could not be pub­lished be­cause of their defam­a­to­ry na­ture.

The mas­quer­aders wore masks and re­fused to say if they rep­re­sent­ed a group or if they were ac­tors who were hired to do the pre­sen­ta­tion.

They caused a stir among at­tor­neys and Ju­di­cia­ry staff, some of whom stopped to take pho­tographs as they were leav­ing the build­ing.

High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in, who hap­pened to be walk­ing by, stopped to ob­serve the per­for­mance. Gob­in was one of the judges who was vo­cal in her crit­i­cism over Archie's re­peat­ed fail­ure to re­but the al­le­ga­tions lev­elled against him.

The mas­quer­aders on­ly moved af­ter se­cu­ri­ty at the build­ing in­ter­vened and asked them to va­cate the lo­ca­tion.

The group al­so at­tempt­ed to cross the judg­ing booth for the Tra­di­tion­al Mas com­pe­ti­tion for schools at City Hall but were stopped by or­gan­is­ers.

"They said that this is for the chil­dren and we are po­lit­i­cal. We can't fight that," one of the mas­quer­aders said.