KE­JAN HAYNES

and JESSE RAMDEO

Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie of­fi­cial­ly demits of­fice to­day, bring­ing to an end more than 17 years at the helm of the Ju­di­cia­ry.

In a me­dia state­ment yes­ter­day, Archie con­firmed that he had writ­ten to Act­ing Pres­i­dent Wade Mark, ad­vis­ing that he would re­tire on Oc­to­ber 22.

The con­fir­ma­tion fol­lows his an­nounce­ment dur­ing the open­ing of the 2025-2026 Law Term last month that his de­par­ture was im­mi­nent.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go has been good to me, and I hope that I have been equal­ly good to my coun­try. It has been an ho­n­our to serve,” Archie said.

He added, “I wish my suc­ces­sor every suc­cess in the pe­ri­od ahead. May God guide his or her path as this new en­deav­our is com­menced.”

Un­der Sec­tion 102 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, the Chief Jus­tice is ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les.

Archie said he was con­fi­dent the Ju­di­cia­ry would con­tin­ue to thrive un­der new lead­er­ship.

“Who­ev­er that may be, I am con­fi­dent that the Ju­di­cia­ry will be in good hands. The next Chief Jus­tice will have my full sup­port, but no un­so­licit­ed ad­vice,” he stat­ed.

Archie first dis­closed his in­ten­tion to re­tire at the law term open­ing, ex­plain­ing that he pre­ferred to leave on his own terms rather than wait un­til the manda­to­ry re­tire­ment age of 70.

“There will al­ways be un­fin­ished busi­ness no mat­ter when I leave, but I have de­cid­ed to re­tire dur­ing this term, so this will be my last speech,” he said, not­ing that his pub­lic an­nounce­ment was in­tend­ed to en­sure a smooth tran­si­tion.

De­scrib­ing the of­fice of Chief Jus­tice as “a sa­cred ba­ton held in trust for one’s suc­ces­sors”, Archie re­flect­ed on his 17-year tenure, high­light­ing re­forms in tech­nol­o­gy, ef­fi­cien­cy, and crim­i­nal case man­age­ment.

He not­ed that crim­i­nal tri­als, which once took more than a decade to con­clude, are now typ­i­cal­ly com­plet­ed with­in 11 to 18 months. Archie cred­it­ed the in­tro­duc­tion of suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ings and plea bar­gain­ing for much of that progress but cau­tioned that these gains could be lost with­out ad­e­quate staffing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.

PM ex­tends grat­i­tude

Mean­while, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has ex­tend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s grat­i­tude to Archie, fol­low­ing con­fir­ma­tion of his re­tire­ment af­ter near­ly two decades of ser­vice at the helm of the ju­di­cia­ry.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Gov­ern­ment “ex­tends its deep grat­i­tude to Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie for his al­most eigh­teen years of dis­tin­guished ser­vice to our na­tion”.

The Prime Min­is­ter not­ed that Archie’s lead­er­ship had left “an in­deli­ble mark on our ju­di­cial land­scape”, com­mend­ing his con­tri­bu­tions to the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice and na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

“We ex­tend sin­cere ap­pre­ci­a­tion and best wish­es to Mr Archie as he em­barks up­on his re­tire­ment. His years of ser­vice have left an in­deli­ble mark on our ju­di­cial land­scape, and we thank him for his con­tri­bu­tions to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and pub­lic ser­vice.”