Pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) Michael de la Bastide says T&T would "no longer be be­hold­en to a for­eign gov­ern­ment" if it be­comes a mem­ber of the Ap­pelate Ju­ris­dic­tion of the CCJ.He ad­mit­ted a rel­a­tive­ly small per­cent­age of cas­es reached the Privy Coun­cil, Lon­don, Eng­land.He made these com­ments dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at CCJ Head­quar­ters', Hen­ry Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day. De La Bastide has served for sev­en years.He said: "There is a heavy re­spon­si­bil­i­ty which goes with it. We have been to be­hold­en to a for­eign gov­ern­ment to pro­vide us with a ser­vice which we ought to be pro­vid­ing for our­selves. This should be a mat­ter of pride. We should as­sume full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

"We should as­sume full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for our le­gal process and the most im­por­tant rung in that le­gal process is the fi­nal one," he added.He al­so lament­ed it would a "cat­a­stro­phe if we lost the CCJ."He al­so ac­knowl­edged de­ci­sions are made that af­fect peo­ple in the hu­man rights.He al­so said the CCJ would be prac­ti­cal in terms of "con­ve­nience and a great sav­ing of ex­pense for cit­i­zens.""They would be able to ac­cess the fi­nal court in Port-of-Spain rather than in Lon­don. That is a fact which would con­tribute to and fa­cil­i­tate ac­cess to jus­tice," he said.

He al­so said an­oth­er dis­ad­van­tage was hav­ing a court close to home rather than "a dis­tant 4000 or 5000 miles away."Re­vert­ing to the 1830s and a re­cent state­ment by Lord Hoff­man, he said the Privy Coun­cil judges "ac­knowl­edged that they were un­der de­cid­ing cas­es from a coun­try with which they had no fa­mil­iar­i­ty what­ev­er." (ML)

About the CCJ

The Caribbean Court of Jus­tice is the re­gion­al ju­di­cial tri­bunal es­tab­lished on Feb­ru­ary 14, 2001.

The Agree­ment was signed by Cari­com and mem­ber states of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, St Kitts and Nevis, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Suri­name and T&T.

CCJ is de­signed to be both an ap­pel­late and an orig­i­nal ju­ris­dic­tion.

The CCJ con­sid­ers and de­ter­mines ap­peals in both civ­il and crim­i­nal mat­ters from com­mon law courts with­in the ju­ris­dic­tions of Cari­com mem­ber states which are par­ties to the agree­ment. In the ap­pelate ju­ris­dic­tion, the CCJ is the high­est mu­nic­i­pal court in the re­gion.

It is the on­ly Court with ju­ris­dic­tion to in­ter­pret and ap­ply the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas. The CCJ was in­au­gu­rat­ed on April 16, 2005.