UK NUDGES REGION TO CCJ?

Was the appointment to the Privy Council of retired Trinidad and Tobago Chief Justice and nominee for President of the proposed Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), Michael de la Bastide, two statements in one by the United Kingdom? Was one meant to be that the appointment was a public recognition of the scholarship and wisdom that de la Bastide had brought to the Trinidad and Tobago Bench, and the other that CARICOM was in a position to establish its own final Court of Appeal?

In turn, was it a pointed dismissal of the backward thinking of a few regional politicians that the English speaking Caribbean did not possess judges of the calibre to sit in final judgment? Former Chief Justice de la Bastide must have spoken on behalf of all right thinking people in the Caribbean Community of Nations when he told Newsday that the appointment “is an endorsement of our own ability to staff a final Court of our own. This appointment will help strengthen the case for the CCJ.” Adding weight to de la Bastide’s argument, is that two other Caribbean jurists — Antigua-born Sir Dennis Byron, Chief Justice of the Organisation of Eastern Caribean States (OECS), and Madame Justice Joan Haynes of the Bahamas — were appointed at the same time to the Privy Council. Yet another Commonwealth Caribbean jurist, Justice Edward Zacca, is already serving as a member of the Privy Council.

It will be difficult to dismiss what is inferred by the appointments that right across the Caribbean archipelago, from Jamaica in the North, through the Eastern Caribbean States in between, to Trinidad and Tobago in the South, there are judges, whose presence in what after all is the Region’s constitutionally appointed final Court of Appeal renders opposition to the establishment of the CCJ an absurdity. For how can opponents to the CCJ argue that they would be prepared to accept judgments handed down by the Privy Council on matters in which, for example, Justice de la Bastide sat, but would not accept the establishment of the CCJ, of which de la Bastide has been nominated President. It is a mental somersault which should be seen as unworthy of Caribbean politicians.

No matter how the objection to Trinidad and Tobago being part of a Caribbean movement to have a Caribbean final Court of Appeal is phrased by the Opposition United National Congress, whether it is linked to Constitution Reform, or a preference expressed for retaining a link to the Privy Council, it is unworthy and absurd. Meanwhile, Newsday congratulates President nominee of the CCJ, Justice de la Bastide; Sir Dennis Byron, and Madame Justice Joan Haynes of the Bahamas on their having been appointed to the Privy Council. Theirs, along with the presence of Justice Edward Zacca, of Jamaica, on the Privy Council, are a positive argument for the establishment of the long delayed CCJ. The irony of it all is that it is the United Kingdom, the former colonial power in the English speaking Caribbean, that has to nudge the Region toward what tacitly is their final step to Independence.