Shir­van Williams

The Caribbean Court of Jus­tice will on­ly work as the fi­nal court of ap­peal in this re­gion if Caribbean peo­ple start be­liev­ing in their own ca­pa­bil­i­ties. These were the sen­ti­ments ex­pressed by the four pan­el­lists at the Sir Arthur Lewis In­sti­tute of So­cial and Eco­nom­ic Stud­ies yes­ter­day at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine. The mem­bers of the pan­el were:

• Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Dr Lester Hen­ry,

• For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al John Je­re­mie,

• T&T Guardian colum­nist and his­to­ri­an Dr Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar,

• Chair­man of the Cari­com Com­pe­ti­tion Com­mis­sion Dr Kusha Haraks­ingh.

The top­ic dis­cussed was: The Caribbean Court of Jus­tice: An idea whose time has come?

Hen­ry said Caribbean peo­ple need­ed to stop de­pend­ing on an in­ter­na­tion­al body to make its de­ci­sions. He ques­tioned if the Privy Coun­cil even had re­spect for peo­ple of the re­gion. "Es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the fact that the Eng­lish peo­ple don't want you. These peo­ple have been try­ing to get rid of you for years. We don't have any shame in this re­gion," he said.

He said the Privy Coun­cil had made it known that it has been very ex­pen­sive to main­tain its re­la­tion­ship with the re­gion, and he felt the de­ci­sions it made re­flect­ed its an­noy­ance with hav­ing to still pre­side over re­gion­al mat­ters. "It's like a pothound try­ing to lick your feet. That's how we look to these peo­ple."

Hen­ry said it was ob­vi­ous that peo­ple had lost faith in their own abil­i­ties. "But the way to solve the prob­lem is not by mak­ing it worse, it is by as­sert­ing more in­de­pen­dence and strength­en­ing your con­fi­dence," he said. Je­re­mie said the two-path ap­proach tak­en by oth­er coun­tries like Malaysia and Sign­ga­pore for leav­ing the Privy Coun­cil could not be adopt­ed by this coun­try be­cause of the Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas.

"The dif­fer­ence, in a nut­shell, is, we are par­ty to an agree­ment, and that agree­ment binds all of us to move as one," he said. This is why, he said, if the coun­try is to move away from the Privy Coun­cil it has to do so with both crim­i­nal and civ­il mat­ters in or­der for the CCJ to work prop­er­ly as a the fi­nal court of ap­peal.

A mem­ber of the au­di­ence, Dr Michael An­tho­ny Lil­la, Chief of Pro­to­col at the CCJ, said peo­ple need­ed to stop think­ing of the court as a Trinida­di­an court. "The CCJ is not a Trinidad and To­ba­go court. It is an in­ter­na­tion­al tri­bunal that func­tions in an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent way to Trinidad and To­ba­go courts," he said.