The Gov­ern­ment's move to abol­ish the Privy Coun­cil as this coun­try's fi­nal court of ap­peal for crim­i­nal mat­ters and re­place it with the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) is a step in the right di­rec­tion, says Regi­nald Ar­mour SC. "It is a step in the right di­rec­tion. I would hope the Gov­ern­ment makes the full step to en­tire­ly abol­ish the Privy Coun­cil and re­place it with the CCJ."

Agree­ing that many mat­ters that end up at the Privy Coun­cil were crim­i­nal ones, Ar­mour said quite a lot of con­sti­tu­tion­al cas­es go there, too. He said con­sti­tu­tion­al mat­ters be­ing han­dled by the CCJ was par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant to the in­de­pen­dence of the re­pub­lic. He said the CCJ should be­come the fi­nal court of ap­peal for civ­il, con­sti­tu­tion­al and crim­i­nal mat­ters.

Ar­mour said he dis­agreed with for­mer prime min­is­ter, Bas­deo Pan­day, that the peo­ple of T&T do not have con­fi­dence in the CCJ. He said there was a very good cal­i­bre of judges across the Caribbean. He said the lo­cal ju­di­cial sys­tem is in good con­di­tion.

"What is need­ed is greater fi­nan­cial sup­port at the lev­el of the mag­is­tra­cy and low­er courts," he said. "That does not re­flect on the com­pe­tence of judges," Ar­mour not­ed.