Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

At­tor­ney Frank Solomon's take on the dis­missal of the Privy Coun­cil-that the move is "mis­guid­ed" and "fu­elled by po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tious­ness and ex­pe­di­en­cy"-pub­lished in last Sun­day's Ex­press, was sharp, and cut sat­is­fy- in­g­ly through the porky ar­gu­ments con­fus­ing around the is­sue, which are pass­ing in­to the na­tion­al con­scious­ness vir­tu­al­ly un­chal­lenged.

My many tal­ents do not ex­tend to in­ter­pret­ing the law or Con­sti­tu­tion, but the gen­er­al push and pull with the Privy Coun­cil/CCJ is less a le­gal/con­sti­tu­tion­al is­sue than a so­cial/cul­tur­al is­sue-it per­tains to the broad mo­ti­va­tion­al be­liefs of the pop­u­la­tion, and the cit­i­zen­ry's re­la­tion­ship with the State.

In brief, peo­ple don't trust the State. We gen­er­al­ly don't hear this mis­trust ex­plic­it­ly stat­ed, be­cause the feel­ing is usu­al­ly in­hib­it­ed by "na­tion­al­ist" jin­go­ism, or the rhetoric of par­ty pol­i­tics. So you rarely hear the case for a lo­cal court of fi­nal ap­peal made in terms of faith in na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions. You hear it couched in some oth­er rhetoric, usu­al­ly na­tion­al "pride" and/or "ma­tu­ri­ty"-if you don't want the CCJ, you're im­ma­ture and un­pa­tri­ot­ic.

Just how many peo­ple want or don't want the CCJ, we're not sure. There is an easy way to find out-by a poll. If there has been a poll done re­cent­ly on the is­sue, the CCJ sup­port­ers have kept its find­ings to them­selves. And it's un­like­ly any test of the pub­lic opin­ion be­yond anec­dote will be sought, be­cause the po­lit­i­cal­ly am­bi­tious, or disin­gen­u­ous, might get re­sults which in­tro­duce them to a re­al­i­ty they strive to avoid-they're get­ting it so wrong, peo­ple doubt the in­tegri­ty of the State.

Nei­ther is the fail­ure, per­ceived and re­al, a lo­cal phe­nom­e­non. In Ja­maica, Carl Stone did an in­de­pen­dence poll for years that asked (among oth­er things) whether the pop­u­lace felt they would have been bet­ter off if the British had stayed. From the late 1990s, at least, more than 50 per cent agreed. The poll has been con­tin­ued by Bill John­son in the last few years, and its re­sults last year showed that 60 per cent of peo­ple still agreed.

This isn't the sort of thing "na­tion­al­ist" or in­cum­bent gov­ern­ments feast on, and in fact is the sort of thing they evade, along with much re­al­i­ty. And the re­al­i­ty of the CCJ-Privy Coun­cil is­sue, and the more in­ti­mate is­sues of the cit­i­zen­ry's faith in lo­cal in­sti­tu­tions, and the state of in­de­pen­dence, is not com­fort­ing.

On the face of it, it seems self-ev­i­dent that it's not the num­ber of cas­es that have been over­turned by the Privy Coun­cil but the is­sues in the cas­es in­volved that is im­por­tant. These in­clude the many cas­es won by the sit­ting At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in­volv­ing ob­vi­ous racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in the treat­ment of civ­il ser­vants, and the Ma­ha Sab­ha ra­dio li­cence.

And it's not just eth­nic­i­ty; un­ease em­anates from oth­er spheres, like the over­turn­ing of the Mus­limeen ac­quit­tal, and Mag­is­trate Fe­lix Du­ri­ty's sus­pen­sion by the JLSC (in 2009, af­ter 19 years).

The dis­com­fi­ture is a vague but per­va­sive sense that the sys­tem is an­ti-or­di­nary cit­i­zen. This is re­in­forced by the every­day ex­pe­ri­ence of the health, po­lice and ed­u­ca­tion sys­tems, so I doubt any­one in Trinidad thinks their life would change sub­stan­tial­ly, if at all, if the Privy Coun­cil were to be re­placed by the CCJ.

The stub­born­ness with which many peo­ple de­sire to re­tain the Privy Coun­cil is a form of pas­sive protest against the crim­i­nal mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion of the State from 1956. In a sense, this opin­ion is one of the few forms of protest peo­ple have re­course to with­out be­ing ac­cused of be­ing "un­pa­tri­ot­ic." (A re­lat­ed form of protest is em­i­gra­tion. From 1962-1990, about 250,000 souls de­part­ed these shores. I'd guess the trend per­sists.)

But the big­ger is­sue here is how these protests-overt and sub­tle-and the jus­ti­fied dis­sat­is­fac­tion that fu­el them are met by the State. With the PNM, it was stone-faced de­nial. The crime epi­dem­ic, eco­nom­ic mis­man­age­ment, ris­ing food prices-all met with the same re­sponse: de­nial, ac­cu­sa­tions of "bad-talk­ing the coun­try," a lack of pa­tri­o­tism and, the most pop­u­lar, say­ing the claims were overblown, be­cause op­po­nents were "try­ing to make the gov­ern­ment look bad."

And it large­ly worked. If it were not for their erst­while il­lus­tri­ous leader's mo­ment of, uhm, in­sta­bil­i­ty, they would have been laugh­ing at us now from Par­lia­ment. But now you see the same at­ti­tude from the PP, who, af­ter 2001-2010, you'd think would know bet­ter. But nope, there they go, rush­ing in. No need for a ref­er­en­dum. Let's do it. (Par­tial­ly.)

Giv­en their ex­pe­ri­ence, why would they do it? One can on­ly sur­mise that the Gov­ern­ment is try­ing to stake a claim to the "na­tion­al­ist" turf with this ges­ture, to es­tab­lish cre­den­tials, if you will. This is trag­ic; it shows how com­plete­ly the PP has mis­un­der­stood Trinidad na­tion­al­ism, and how per­verse­ly the me­dia have dis­tort­ed the CCJ/Privy Coun­cil is­sue.

The PNM has man­aged to in­sin­u­ate its val­ues in­to the very idea of na­tion­al­ism-Car­ni­val, eth­nic­i­ty, and au­thor­i­tar­i­an­ism. No adop­tion of a sin­gle pol­i­cy, or sin­gle sym­bol­ic de­ci­sion, will change that. No one who doesn't like the PP now will like them be­cause of the CCJ. What would change every­thing is mak­ing in­sti­tu­tions ef­fi­cient. But that would in­volve work.

Hav­ing said all that, the CCJ/ Privy Coun­cil switch seems in­evitable, and it's un­like­ly it'll change any­thing. The ma­chine that is the lo­cal le­gal sys­tem will grind on. You could say those few vi­tal de­ci­sions that came down from the Privy Coun­cil pro­vid­ed a few flash­es of light in a very dark night. But see­ing the tragi­com­ic bum­bling of this Gov­ern­ment, which un­der­stood all this so well while in op­po­si­tion, maybe the glim­mers are just mi­rages.