Derek Achong

Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie will ad­dress a coun­try di­vid­ed over the state of the Ju­di­cary when he de­liv­ers his an­nu­al ad­dress at the open­ing of the 2019/2020 Law Term this morn­ing.

Archie, whose pri­vate and pro­fes­sion­al de­ci­sions have been un­der pu­bic scruni­ty for some time, may choose to use the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­dress his nu­mer­ous crit­ics in­clud­ing col­leagues, promi­nent at­tor­neys and most re­cent­ly the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s non-ju­di­cal staff.

Such a move would not be un­prece­dent­ed as Archie has used the fo­rum in the past to ad­dress con­tro­ver­sial na­tion­al is­sues, to high­light de­vel­op­ments with­in the Ju­di­cia­ry and to ad­vo­cate for re­forms.

In an ex­clu­sive state­ment grant­ed at the re­quest of Guardian Me­dia, High Court judge Frank Seep­er­sad shared his con­cerns with the cur­rent state of the or­gan­i­sa­tion he rep­re­sents.

While he praised re­cent ef­forts to im­prove the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem through pro­ce­dur­al and ad­min­is­tra­tive re­forms, Seep­er­sad ques­tioned the sus­tain­abli­ty of the ef­forts in light of ex­ist­ing fi­nan­cial con­straints.

He al­so ques­tioned the knock-on ef­fect of the mea­sures on long-stand­ing pub­lic ser­vants, who stand to lose their po­si­tions.

Seep­er­sad al­so cit­ed a re­cent poll by poll­ster Nigel Hen­ry, which gave the Ju­di­cia­ry an 12 per cent ap­proval rat­ing, as a cause for con­cern.

“This sta­tis­tic is so shock­ing­ly low that, even if one fac­tors in mar­gins of er­ror and oth­er polling de­fi­cien­cies, the head of every sin­gle ju­di­cal of­fi­cer should be bent in shame,” Seep­er­sad said.

Seep­er­sad, who boy­cotted last year’s cer­e­mo­ny along with sev­er­al of his col­leagues, said he would be at­tend­ing this year for a spe­cif­ic pur­pose.

“En­gulfed by shame, my fo­cus at Mon­day’s cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing shall be di­rect­ed up­on prayer­ful pe­ti­tions to catal­yse change,” Seep­er­sad, who is al­so a Pres­by­ter­ian lay min­is­ter, said.

The out­spo­ken judge added: Judges of the Court of Ap­peal have made di­rect and poignant state­ments in two mat­ters in­volv­ing, the Chief Jus­tice and yet in de­fi­ance of log­ic, con­ven­tion and pro­pri­ety , the Chief Jus­tice con­tin­ues at the helm of this im­plod­ing in­sti­tu­tion seem­ing­ly em­bold­ened and un­ac­count­able. (See jus­tice Seep­er­sad’s state­ment be­low)

Like Seep­er­sad, Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan, him­self an out­spo­ken crit­ic of Archie, said that he would be at­tend­ing the cer­e­mo­ny un­like in re­cent years.

Khan, in a state­ment sent on Fri­day, called on oth­er at­tor­neys to do the same in a show of sol­i­dar­i­ty for the in­sti­tu­tion.

“I refuse to cut my nose to spite my face in this brazen “bac­cha­nal” in­volv­ing Ivor Archie: I am a strong sup­port­er of the Ju­di­cia­ry and I will con­tin­ue to do so,” Khan said.

Khan al­so made a pre­dic­tion on what one of the top­ics Archie may adress may be.

“Thus I am hop­ing against hope that when the Chief Jus­tice ad­dress­es the na­tion via his cer­e­mo­ni­al speech on the oc­ca­sion of the 2019-2020 Law Term he will an­nounce his res­ig­na­tion and save the Ju­di­cia­ry and the coun­try from the rapid po­lar­iza­tion on the grounds of racial and so­cio-eco­nom­i­cal lines in­volv­ing the al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct made against him,” Khan said.

Dur­ing his speech, Archie is ex­pect­ed to re­port on the per­for­mance of the or­gan­i­sa­tion over the past year as well as on the changes with­in in.

Al­though the on­go­ing staff re­struc­tur­ing across the dif­fer­ent arms of the Ju­di­cia­ry has been tout­ed to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy and the qual­i­ty of jus­tice be­ing dis­pensed, it has di­rect­ly led to staff mem­bers be­ing forced to com­pete and qual­i­fy for new po­si­tions, the du­ties of which they have been es­sen­tial­ly per­form­ing for sev­er­al years.

The ma­jor­i­ty of those af­fect­ed are pub­lic ser­vants, who will now have to be ab­sorbed in­to oth­er ar­eas of the pub­lic ser­vice if they fail to be re­hired un­der con­tracts.

In April, amid dai­ly protest ac­tion from the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), out­spo­ken High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in wrote to the Ju­di­cia­ry’s court ex­ec­u­tive ad­min­is­tra­tor Mas­ter Christie Anne Mor­ris-Al­leyne to en­quire about the re­struc­tur­ing.

“The lack of in­for­ma­tion or de­tail and un­cer­tain­ty is caus­ing us all a great deal of wor­ry. My staff are ex­treme­ly de­spon­dent and fear­ful about the fu­ture,” Gob­in said at the time.

Most re­cent­ly, High Court judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad al­so sought to ques­tion the lack of con­sul­ta­tion for the re­struc­tur­ing.

In an email, sent to all of his col­leagues, last week, Ram­per­sad sug­gest­ed that the change would di­rect­ly af­fect his and his col­leagues’ abil­i­ty to dis­pense jus­tice in a time­ly man­ner.

Ram­per­sad said: “If a lit­i­gant has to now wait an ex­tra two months or more for a hear­ing, their grouse is not ex­pressed in terms of de­fi­cien­cies of the HR de­part­ment, but it is ad­dressed as a de­fi­cien­cy of the Judge.”

Ram­per­sad al­so ques­tioned whether the sit­u­a­tion would wors­en as the Ju­di­cia­ry moves to dou­ble its com­ple­ment of judges to ad­dress the much-ma­ligned crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.