FEDERATION PARK TO THE CCJ

THE PEOPLE of Trinidad and Tobago, and the exotic Caribbean are remarkably resourceful. Travel anywhere and the evidence of their impact is something to behold in everything, whether it be beauty, roti, music, the arts and sciences, cricket, football, baseball, the Olympics, or in just enjoying themselves for so, as in the carnivals they have spawned all over the place. As Cyril Bernard is fond of saying, mimicking Robert De Niro, that giant of the silver screen, “You! You’re good! You’re really good!”

There is no need even to travel to observe the tremendous industry of Caribbean people, when, that is, they get the vaps to be industrious. Witness their penchant for building houses from scratch and living in them, come rain or shine, while they are gradually but surely turned into palaces. But therein lies the downside to their creativity: questionable attention to planning and blasting off without taking proper stock of the world about.

The ups and downs of our people are vividly reflected in the rise and fall of the 1958 to 1961 West Indian Federation, of which Federation Park in St Clair is an attractive but stark reminder. The question arises, will the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) prove to be another case of jumping the gun — a classic example of that saying of which the late great Mr Isaacs of QRC’s Hall of Latin Fame was so fond, namely, that “Those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat its mistakes?”

Reflecting on the Privy Council’s recent decision against the constitutional process in the creation of the CCJ, some may be inclined to wag their fingers at the door of the supposedly anti-hanging Privy Council. But to do that would be to blame the messenger, while ignoring the message. The very fact that the Privy Council was invited to arbitrate on the CCJ issue at all, disclosed the lurking doubts among Caribbean people, not about ever establishing a final Appeal Court for the Caribbean as a whole, but about getting rid of the Privy Council, the region’s ultimate legal safety net, at the same time.

Before Caricom, the attempts to unify Caribbean people came to a grinding halt in 1961 for several reasons. A very simple one was that it amounted to an upside down proposal, in that, in effect, it entailed the imposition of union by those in political control of the society. The CCJ, attractive though it remains for local unification, has been similarly inspired. Its purpose is not simply to improve the dispensation of justice to those at the wrong end of the legal tightrope, but, ostensibly, to ditch the Privy Council and provide opportunities for the so-called development of those presiding over Caribbean Jurisprudence.

Let it be known that Caribbean Jurists have held their own in every judicial arena to which they have enjoyed access. They do not need a CCJ, merely to develop and show off their competence. At a meeting in London on the CCJ and the Privy Council at Grays Inn, on February 10 last, chaired with consumate skill by Anesta Weekes, the illustrious London QC from Montserrat, and graced by the presence of Her Excellency, Glenda Morean-Phillips, our High Commissioner in London, another lawyer, I had the privilege of meeting a favourite among British Law Lords: Lord Bingham of Cornhill, no less. To have him tell me of his personal admiration for the achievements of our Michael de La Bastide was enough to warm the heart of a freezing Trinidadian.

In articles in our press, I have attempted previously to deal with the main arguments for and against the Privy Council, which, in my humble view, come down firmly in favour of retaining the Privy Council — cost free to us, don’t forget — for the foreseeable future at least. At the top of the list, usually, is that the Privy Council violates our sovereignty, according to its critics. What naivety, in this day and age, in which the province of sovereignty, universally, is being steadily eroded by the principle of human rights?

Doubt me? You need only look at the former Yugoslavia and, more recently and dramatically, Iraq, to appreciate the tsunamic extent to which sovereignty has become practically meaningless for all but extremely powerful states. And even in a society, steeped in tradition and as powerful as Britain, it is already settled that the highest British Courts must now bow to the supremacy of a court abroad: the European Court of Justice. The trend towards extra-territorial adjudication, surely, is even more clearly reflected in the very emergence of the International Criminal Court.

Another powerful argument for extra-territorial jurisdiction has been provided, of late, by developments in Pitcairn Island, occupied for centuries by the descendants of Christian Fletcher, the leader of the mutiny, in 1789, on Captain Bligh’s ship, The Bounty. As it happens, it was on a mission to introduce breadfruit plants to the Caribbean. It took a court outside the territory, recently, to convict men on the island, who for ages had subjected their women, some of them not yet teenagers, to sexual abuse. So brain-washed were the victims, they have only just begun to appreciate the extent of the wrongs done to them. You can be sure that the men involved would have been perfectly happy for the matter to be dealt with by some final court of review on their island.

True, the Privy Council sits in London, still a long way away. This could easily be remedied, I submit, by rotating where it sits. But even so, it is not that inconvenient, given that Caribbean people are probably more frequent visitors to London, not to mention New York, than they are to neighbouring Caribbean islands. In any case, the Privy Council’s remoteness places it well beyond the reach of local bacchanal and “comess.”

A CCJ without the support of a sensitive, authoritative, highly respected, extra-territorial court, such as the Privy Council, could well become blown off course by vicious international winds, not to mention the cold breezes of determined territorial governments, when this suited their whims and fancies, let alone their survival.

(Dr Rawle Boland is a Trinidad-born lawyer based in London)