Ak­ile Si­mon

There is wide­spread spec­u­la­tion in ju­di­cial cir­cles over the fu­ture of Chief Mag­is­trate Sher­man Mc Nicolls. This comes as Mc Nicolls has put in a sick-leave ap­pli­ca­tion for 90 days, one day pri­or to the end of a two-week va­ca­tion. Two Thurs­days ago Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie ap­point­ed Deputy Chief Mag­is­trate Mark Welling­ton to act in Mc Nicolls' ab­sence and se­nior Tu­na­puna Mag­is­trate In­dra Ramoo-Haynes as act­ing Deputy Chief Mag­is­trate. Archie's de­ci­sion left much to be de­sired in the minds of ju­di­cial of­fi­cers across the coun­try, par­tic­u­lar­ly at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court where Mc Nicolls pre­sides. Mc Nicolls' ad­di­tion­al leave is ex­pect­ed to ex­pire on March 20, and he ought to re­sume du­ty on March 22.

How­ev­er, ju­di­cial of­fi­cers, speak­ing with the Sun­day Guardian on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said this was "hard­ly like­ly." A source added: "It is every­body's guess what would hap­pen on March 20, which is a Sat­ur­day. "Come March, he may ei­ther sub­mit a fur­ther sick leave (cer­tifi­cate), or go in­to his va­ca­tion which is ap­prox­i­mate­ly one year," the source said. "We don't think that he's go­ing to come back." Mc Nicolls, who turns 55 in De­cem­ber, has served ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 years in the pub­lic ser­vice. The Privy Coun­cil is ex­pect­ed to hand down a de­ci­sion soon on whether Mc Nicolls should face a dis­ci­pli­nary tri­bunal for his re­fusal to tes­ti­fy in a crim­i­nal mat­ter in­volv­ing for­mer chief jus­tice, Sat­nar­ine Shar­ma.

The Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion brought six dis­ci­pli­nary charges against Mc Nicolls af­ter his re­fusal to tes­ti­fy caus­ing the case against Shar­ma to col­lapse. In the event the Privy Coun­cil rules against Mc Nicolls, he would face the tri­bunal and his pen­sion and oth­er ben­e­fits would be at stake. One mag­is­trate said: "When his (Mc Nicolls') va­ca­tion ex­pires, he would then ten­der his (re­tire­ment) pa­pers, and if by that time there are no find­ings made ad­verse to him, he would be able to re­tire with his full ben­e­fits." The ju­di­cial of­fi­cer added that those pro­vi­sions are con­tained in the Pub­lic Ser­vice Reg­u­la­tions. "It's a wait-and-see ap­proach, even though I think he has had enough and he is tak­ing all his leave and might not come back," an­oth­er mag­is­trate said.