DISMISSAL OF JUDICIARY

Government’s dismissive treatment of the Judiciary which has resulted in the threatened closure of the San Fernando Magistrates’ Court by the San Fernando City Corporation’s Local Health Authority is unacceptable. What Government has done is allow a building in which justice is dispensed to be reduced in a humbling manner to the level of a delinquent “cook shop” given a grace period by vigilant Public Health Inspectors to clean up its premises or else.

It is inexcusable that Government should have allowed this situation to have developed, particularly as Chief Justice Sat Sharma has been calling on Government, almost from the day he assumed office to do something about the deteriorating conditions of several of the buildings housing the country’s courts. It cannot plead ignorance of the rundown conditions at the San Fernando Magistrates’ Court, because not only had the building been a crucial part of the Chief Justice’s focus, but former Attorney General, Mrs Glenda Morean-Phillip, had assured since 2003 that two buildings had been earmarked as replacements for the courthouse.

The warning of intended closure by the Public Health Inspectors is an indication that not only were the conditions, which existed at the Magistrates’ Courts in 2003 not tackled but that, additionally, nothing had been done to arrest the building’s physical decline. In turn, the intervention by the Health Inspectors meant that in their view the situation had clearly worsened over the past year to the point of becoming intolerable. Meanwhile, inaction by Government could somehow convey the impression, however unintentionally, that it had a cavalier approach to the conditions under which justice was dispensed and by extension represented a dismissal of the concerns of the Judiciary. The Chief Justice, as noted earlier, had on occcasion expressed dissatisfaction with some of the buildings housing the nation’s courts. In addition, last year, several lawyers representing clients in matters being heard in the San Fernando Magistrates’ Court had staged a limited boycott in protest against conditions prevailing there.

Although the three powers of Government are the Legislative, Executive and Judicial, the Constitution does not furnish the Judicial component with the power to raise revenue. Instead, the Judicial arm has to wait on the Legislative and Executive to provide it with the needed funds and buildings inter alia. Government by its tacit withholding of monies to effect maintenance, repairs or refurbishing of court houses, particularly where repeated requests have been made to it, and by no less an office holder than the Chief Justice, may encourage the perception that it would like the judicial arm to come to it “cap in hand.”

We shift gears to pose this question. Why is it that in developed and some not so developed countries court houses and other major public buildings seem to stand up for relatively long periods while in Trinidad and Tobago they become unusable after a mere few decades? The Government of oil-rich Trinidad and Tobago which, puzzlingly, is so unconcerned with additional revenues from crude that it can allow itself to be saddled with an oil tax regime that, even with international crude prices hovering around US$50 a barrel, can only guarantee it with an average price of US$32.60 a barrel, should be able to properly accommodate its judicial arm.