Put justice first

Nothing more, nothing less.

The fact is the Judiciary has been in crisis long before this latest controversy. Far more scandalous are the conditions undergone by prisoners and by magistrates daily throughout this country where preliminary inquiries drag on for years, where there is delay after delay whether due to absent police officers or filibustering advocates, and where the only people who seem to benefit are criminals.

If those outraged by the embarrassing recruitment process involving Ayers-Caesar truly care about the administration of justice, they will focus on what needs to be done to ensure that the processes of the legal system work. And work well.

There is arguably a need for constructive dialogue on how all of the outstanding matters in the Chief Magistrate’s docket can be continued without time being wasted and years of effort going in vain. There may be no legal barrier, as some have opined.

As for the Chief Justice he reportedly made efforts to interrogate whether the officer involved was able to take up a post at the High Court. Tuesday’s statement from the Judicial and Legal Service Commission (JLSC), which Archie chairs ex officio, makes plain the practice of the JLSC of inquiring first and foremost of the sitting judicial officer any questions it may have.

This may seem strange, but remember we are dealing with sitting judges and magistrates. Recruitment matters of this nature have to be handled with kitten gloves.

Interference with the work of a sitting Chief Magistrate, Sherman McNicols, was one of the charges levied against former Chief Justice Satnarine Sharma. And we all know how that ended up.

The JLSC is not an ordinary recruiting agency from the private sector. It has limited resources and is fettered by the need to overzealously observe the judicial independence of those who appear before it.

For decades, certain traditions and practices have been deemed necessary.

The question now raised by this impasse, however, is whether the time has come for reform. It may well be that this unquestionably botched appointment is the best argument yet for giving the Judiciary full and complete autonomy over its workings, including its recruitment practices and budget so that it may devise its own resource requirements and processes. If this were already the case, if judges were already subject to an open, neutral, regimented system adequately insulated from the Executive and the Judiciary, then perhaps none of this would have happened.

At the same time, the Judiciary cannot hope for its own budget while its overseas travel remains murky and unaccounted for. All such travel should be strictly work-related, if not banned.

Ironically, the post of Chief Magistrate has remained controversial.

The McNicols/Sharma affair revealed the nasty intricacies of how political actors often impinge on judicial officers, undermining the idea of justice itself. If the State abolishes murder inquiries – which is what the Chief Magistrate primarily deals with – the post will be substantially altered.

But in a situation where crime continues, where women and men are dying daily, where there is a tremendous backlog of cases, where no justice seems to be coming due to lack of proper investigation and due to a bottleneck in the criminal justice system, is the Marcia Ayers-Caesar flub really the priority? It should not be. What the Chief Justice, Chief Magistrate, the lawyers and the State – including the political directorate – should be focusing on now is dealing with crime. That is what we as a society contract them to do.