The is­sue is not about the abil­i­ty, in­tegri­ty, track record and more of Court of Ap­peal Judge, Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh as Chief Jus­tice; it is about the to­tal dis­re­spect for the con­sti­tu­tion­al re­quire­ment of con­sul­ta­tion by act­ing Pres­i­dent Wade Mark with the Prime Min­is­ter and the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, and the deep po­lit­i­cal in­trigue in­volved in the ap­point­ment.

The con­junc­ture of cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the res­ig­na­tion of out­go­ing CJ Ivor Archie, the ab­sence from the coun­try of Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, and the non-ex­is­tence of mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tion by Mark with the Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is a cu­ri­ous de­vel­op­ment. 

Ac­cord­ing to Op­po­si­tion Leader Beck­les, she was giv­en a short thrift by Mark to re­spond to his in­vi­ta­tion to put for­ward a can­di­date for the of­fice of the Chief Jus­tice; when pre­vi­ous­ly the re­quest was for con­sid­er­a­tion of an act­ing chief jus­tice. She de­scribed the sec­ond re­quest as “a man­i­fest rush to ap­point a Chief Jus­tice while the sub­stan­tive Pres­i­dent, Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, is out of the coun­try.”

From Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar, mean­while, came a brief no­ti­fi­ca­tion that she had “no pref­er­ence” for the job. An in­cred­u­lous po­si­tion from a Prime Min­is­ter who has been deeply and pub­licly in­volved in ap­point­ments of far less sig­nif­i­cance, such as state boards and the like.

As it is well known, the first Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic, the dis­tin­guished Sir El­lis Clarke, made known what he con­sid­ered the con­sul­ta­tive process which leads to the se­lec­tion and ap­point­ment of a chief jus­tice. The pres­i­dent is re­quired to en­gage in con­sul­ta­tion with the prime min­is­ter and op­po­si­tion leader on their views of a pos­si­ble ap­pointee. So in­formed and for­ti­fied, the pres­i­dent is then free to make a de­lib­er­ate judge­ment. Log­i­cal­ly, de­ci­sion-mak­ing of that kind re­quires a mea­sure of re­search and con­tem­pla­tion by the pres­i­dent be­fore a ra­tio­nal choice can be ar­rived at. 

Was such a process adopt­ed by act­ing Pres­i­dent Mark? Ac­cord­ing to Beck­les, first the re­quest was for an act­ing chief jus­tice, then, in a flash, it changed to the ap­point­ment of the per­ma­nent chief jus­tice. Why?

Hav­ing not con­sult­ed with the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly ap­point­ed per­sons, i.e., the Prime Min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion Leader, with­out the time to do his own re­search and con­tem­pla­tion, how did Mark ar­rive at Court of Ap­peal Judge Boodoos­ingh?

What makes the cir­cum­stances of the en­tire sce­nario so sus­pi­cious and filled with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of po­lit­i­cal in­trigue is that Mark, as a life­long po­lit­i­cal­ly aligned Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress se­nior mem­ber, en­gaged in what can be de­scribed as a “hus­tle” to ap­point a chief jus­tice.

When such be­hav­iours are open­ly dis­played in a de­lib­er­ate­ly un­car­ing and in­ap­pro­pri­ate man­ner, how then are cit­i­zens ex­pect­ed to take note and be pos­i­tive­ly in­flu­enced by the ex­em­plars of the so­ci­ety?

The above mat­ters raised and far more should be ide­al ground for open de­bate and dis­cus­sion by the wider so­ci­ety on how this process should be con­duct­ed in fu­ture. So­ci­ety, in­clu­sive of all, the man-in-the-street, the in­tel­li­gentsia, the le­gal bod­ies, such as the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT) and its mem­bers, must raise in­de­pen­dent and in­formed voic­es on what seem­ing­ly amounts to po­lit­i­cal chi­canery and schem­ing, which re­placed a prop­er con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly ap­point­ed process. LATT start­ed the process yes­ter­day but the con­ver­sa­tion must con­tin­ue so that there is not a re­peat sce­nario in T&T’s fu­ture.