The month of April has ar­rived and met us all the poor­er in the ab­sence of sev­er­al key peo­ple who had helped pre­scribe an al­ter­na­tive de­vel­op­men­tal path­way for us in T&T and the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty.

For cer­tain, mov­ing the re­gion from one phase to the next in pur­suit of the kind of in­de­pen­dence that breeds self-con­fi­dence and pride—based on re­al achieve­ment —has proven as painful as it has been ben­e­fi­cial in small but mean­ing­ful steps.

Over­com­ing dif­fi­dence and self-loathing is a well-known chal­lenge of the post-colo­nial ex­pe­ri­ence—all six­ty-one and a half years of it in our case. Those who dare en­gage in the dy­nam­ics of change have, sad­ly, not ap­peared in sig­nif­i­cant num­bers.

So, when last Sat­ur­day the news broke that Michael de la Bastide had died there was a fu­tile scram­ble to put my hands on my copy of With­in the Law, Mem­oirs of A Caribbean Ju­rist.

In it, I had borne wit­ness not to su­per­hu­man pow­ers and re­solve, but to very hu­man at­trib­ut­es up­on en­coun­ter­ing new and dif­fi­cult ter­rain. Had I found the book, I could have filled this space with quips and anec­dotes to sup­port this con­tention of es­sen­tial hu­man­i­ty.

On­ly three days be­fore this had come word that Désirée Bernard of Guyana—an­oth­er mem­ber of the in­au­gur­al Bench of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) – had passed. This came al­most three months af­ter the death of Dutch ju­rist Ja­cob Wit who, in 2005, had sat along­side de la Bastide and Bernard and two oth­ers in the brave, new world of the CCJ.

Al­so among them 19 years ago this month, was the late Guyana-born Caribbean ju­rist/le­gal lu­mi­nary Duke Pol­lard, who left us in 2022.

The im­por­tant na­ture of the task em­braced by these Caribbean icons has been cap­tured in the nu­mer­ous, fit­ting ac­co­lades that have reached the pub­lic space through­out the re­gion.

It must have griev­ed them heav­i­ly though that the com­mit­ments of the 2001 un­der­tak­ing and 2005 in­au­gu­ra­tion had dwin­dled to timid ap­pre­hen­sion and cru­el ac­tive and pas­sive am­biva­lence. For in­stance, late prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day had once lob­bied force­ful­ly to host the head­quar­ters of the CCJ and spoke elo­quent­ly in sup­port of its es­tab­lish­ment.

His sub­se­quent cam­paign for ur­gent re­form of the na­tion­al Con­sti­tu­tion (which is cur­rent­ly be­ing con­sid­ered since his pass­ing in Jan­u­ary) sig­nif­i­cant­ly omit­ted men­tion of fi­nal ap­pel­late sta­tus for the CCJ.

This is de­spite, even dur­ing his rigid about-turn on the mat­ter, con­ced­ing that the fear of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence and the po­ten­tial for dis­pro­por­tion­ate fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions, were com­plete­ly un­found­ed giv­en the process for the ap­point­ment of judges and the court’s in­no­v­a­tive fund­ing mech­a­nism.

To­day, in 2024, some of these base­less con­cerns have re­turned to haunt us. The Caribbean le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty is yet to ful­ly ven­ti­late these sub­jects in the pub­lic space —the prac­tice of law seem­ing­ly be­ing the stuff of clois­tered virtue.

In fact, we keep hear­ing non­sense, even from pro­fes­sion­al ad­vo­cates, about “we not in the CCJ” de­spite ex­ist­ing, manda­to­ry com­pli­ance as a court of orig­i­nal ju­ris­dic­tion on ques­tions of the re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas and T&T hav­ing been the sub­ject of judg­ments both in favour and against sin­gle mar­ket prac­tices by this coun­try.

To his cred­it, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour has re­peat­ed­ly flagged the is­sue. On Sat­ur­day, on hear­ing of the pass­ing of the for­mer Chief Jus­tice, he said, “In ac­knowl­edg­ing his in­deli­ble con­tri­bu­tion to the qual­i­ty of this Re­pub­lic’s proud de­vel­op­ment since its in­de­pen­dence, the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go can now con­tribute to com­plet­ing his dream of re­plac­ing the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil with the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice.”

Ar­mour should now get all his col­leagues to more ag­gres­sive­ly pur­sue full adop­tion of all func­tions of the CCJ, es­pe­cial­ly as part of the process of re­form­ing our Con­sti­tu­tion.

This, more than any stat­ue or street name or fan­cy state­ment, is the least to be ex­pect­ed as a fit­ting trib­ute to Michael de la Bastide and the team of pi­o­neers who helped us inch for­ward to com­plete the act of our in­de­pen­dence. Sad that he and some of the oth­er lead­ing pi­o­neers have not lived to see us get there.