No say by electorate on CCJ

THE EDITOR: As a devoted Newsday reader I have a duty to take issue with Winford James’ convoluted reasoning and contradictions that dominated his Sunday August 17 article under the rubric —“Silly Politics on the CCJ.”

Mr James appears to be a purveyor of the very sin of which he accuses Mr Panday. It is in the public domain that I do not and cannot hold any brief for the latter. Mr James premises his arguments on a false and misleading assumption that the CCJ is a creation of the “West Indian people.” It is “a West Indian cause” that must take precedence over national concerns. Would Mr James please tell erudite Newsday readers in his next offering what consultations were undertaken with any or all of the “West Indian people” of the respective member States of Caricom to determine their views (“independent thought”) on the abolition of appeals to the Judicial arm of the Privy council and its replacement by the CCJ? Would Mr James, the independent thinker by inference, tell us which of the respective Caribbean Community parliaments, law associations, NGOs etc that speak for the people were afforded any opportunity to debate the draft Statute Establishing the CCJ and could have changed a coma or added a full-stop? Would Mr James be agreeable to endowing Cabinet with a law-creating capacity that supplants the role of our bicameral legislature?

Having regard to Mr James’ thesis that West Indian politics, to quote him verbatim,”...pivots around one man- his discretion (s), his moods, his strengths, his foibles...” (Constitutionalised dictatorship) how can these Prime Ministers without consulting their electorate (The West Indian people) and according to Mr James, who are not capable of “independent thought” unilaterally decide to abolish our Constitutional right of appeal to the Privy Council, to impose a CCJ, swear in the Judicial and Legal Service Commission in TT, all of which are ultra vires to our own Constitution- the supreme law of the land. Did Mr James as a political scientist and I presume an “independent thinker,” if that creature ever exists, ever get a chance as a member of the UWI intelligentsia to have a say on the CCJ that constitutes such a fundamental departure from the current system of justice? Finally I wish to remind Mr James that to attribute every imaginary or real failing or negativities endemic amongst Trinbagonians to our “...ex-slave, ex-indentured societies” represents a level of anachronistic thought that is fundamental to a genre of misleading and outdated neo-colonialism that no longer impresses anyone.

STEPHEN KANGAL
Caroni