Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves has confirmed that Attorney General, Jaundy Martin is not renewing his contract and wants to be with his family that resides overseas.
“I’ve asked him to stay on for at least another month,” Gonsalves told radio listeners, confirming that the government is searching for a new chief legal advisor.
Martin’s contract ends this month. He has been in the position for the past five years.
“He has his family. He has to go and be with his family who lives overseas,” said Gonsalves, who is also Minister of Legal Affairs.
“But, as you will know, I will have somebody in mind and would have spoken to that person already, but I am not ready to speak about it,” he said.
Martin is the second person to serve as attorney general since Gonsalves’ Unity Labour Party (ULP) was returned to office in March 2021. He replaced Judith Jones-Morgan, who served for 16 years ending September 2017.
When he was sworn into the position, Martin said he was “very overwhelmed by the occasion,” adding “it is something that I never personally aspired to, but in the legal profession and a person in service in this country, anything is possible”.
Martin pursued a legal career including stints as the Registrar of the family court, administrator of severance payments for former plantation workers in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, as the local coordinator for the Caribbean Court of Justice, and as coordinator of the legal aid project for St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
He is also a court-appointed mediator for the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court; and a former executive of the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Bar Association.
Martin was sworn in as Attorney General of St. Vincent and the Grenadines on 18 September 2017.
CMC/
