Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie has ac­cused the me­dia of be­ing bi­ased to­wards the Ju­di­cia­ry. 

De­liv­er­ing his an­nu­al ad­dress at the open­ing of the 2019/2020 Law Term at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Archie re­peat­ed­ly claimed that the me­dia was fo­cused on al­leged scan­dals with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion and not its suc­cess­es in im­prov­ing the lo­cal jus­tice sys­tem. 

Archie said: “What is lam­en­ta­ble is that de­spite sta­tis­tics which show in­creased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty across the board, the re­al­i­ty is that fact is now over­shad­owed by per­cep­tion in­flu­enced by po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion.” 

Archie sug­gest­ed that jour­nal­ists are al­low­ing them­selves to be en­trapped by de­trac­tors who seek to ad­vance their po­lit­i­cal agen­das through desta­bil­is­ing State in­sti­tu­tions.  

“This is aid­ed by the aban­don­ment of the fourth es­tate of its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ed­u­cate and in­form or even be re­spon­si­ble at times...Re­liance on un­in­formed but so-called “re­li­able but anony­mous” sources is hard­ly enough,” Archie said. 

While Archie not­ed that the Ju­di­cia­ry was will­ing to fa­cil­i­tate re­quests for in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing is­sues af­fect­ing it and its ini­tia­tives, he said the fa­cil­i­ty had been used in the past to fur­ther un­found­ed al­le­ga­tions. 

“At the risk of crit­i­cism, I am be­ing ac­cused of ar­ro­gance, I have to say that I am too busy do­ing the peo­ple’s work to keep re­ply­ing to di­rect in­quiries when they are based on false premis­es and of­ten im­per­ti­nent. Please don’t waste any of our time,” Archie said. 

Archie then sought to dis­pel mis­in­for­ma­tion over the state of the Ju­di­cia­ry. 

“Con­trary to the im­pres­sion that is be­ing de­lib­er­ate­ly prop­a­gat­ed we are not in a cri­sis or a sham­bles,” Archie said. 

Jour­nal­ists were not the on­ly ones who re­ceived stiff crit­i­cism from Archie, who al­so aimed his blows at his col­leagues and mem­bers of the le­gal com­mu­ni­ty. 

Al­though Archie did not re­fer to out­spo­ken crit­ic, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad, di­rect­ly in his speech, he did make veiled ref­er­ences which ap­peared to be di­rect­ed at him (Seep­er­sad) and oth­er judges who have open­ly raised ob­jec­tions over re­cent events dur­ing Archie’s over decade-long tenure. 

“This job is not about pro­fil­ing in the me­dia or storm­ing big peo­ple par­ty. For­give me for speak­ing frankly when I say, if you are pow­er or sta­tus-dri­ven, you can be as bright as you want, you are not suit­able,” Archie said, in an open mes­sage to prospec­tive judges. 

He al­so plead­ed with his col­leagues to be mind­ful of their pub­lic com­ments and ob­jec­tions as he claimed that they have the po­ten­tial to un­der­mined the or­gan­i­sa­tion and weak­en its in­de­pen­dence. 

“It pro­duces an en­vi­ron­ment that breathes di­vi­sion, dis­uni­ty, self-loathing and the per­pet­u­a­tion of trib­al­ism with all its con­no­ta­tions,” he said. 

Seep­er­sad, who gave an ex­clu­sive a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia on his con­cerns over the state of the or­gan­i­sa­tion on the eve of yes­ter­day’s cer­e­mo­ny, at­tend­ed the in­ter-faith ser­vice which pre­ced­ed Archie’s speech. 

How­ev­er, he was not present while Archie was de­liv­er­ing the speech as he had to pre­side over an emer­gency hear­ing of a case in­volv­ing the Nurs­ing Coun­cil of T&T. 

An­oth­er no­table ab­sen­tee was out­spo­ken High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in, who was re­cent­ly as­signed to head the Ju­di­cia­ry’s new Fam­i­ly Court in To­ba­go, which is ex­pect­ed to be launched lat­er this month. 

While Archie did not men­tion Gob­in by name, he did state that he was dis­mayed by ob­jec­tions over a vet­er­an High Court Judge be­ing as­signed to the court. 

Archie stat­ed that the fi­nal de­ci­sion to re­as­sign judges rests with him. He al­so not­ed that on­ly judges with ex­pe­ri­ence and the cor­rect tem­pera­ment could be as­signed to the court. 

“On­ly a spe­cial type of judge goes there and it would be very short-sight­ed in­deed if we think we could fix the crime prob­lem in this coun­try with­out fix­ing our fam­i­lies,” Archie said. 

He al­so sought to dis­pel con­cerns over the Ju­di­cia­ry’s fail­ure to es­tab­lish a Fam­i­ly Court in San Fer­nan­do as he claimed that the project is on the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s agen­da over the next year. 

Archie made lit­tle men­tion of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion in his speech. 

Archie spoke about its re­port and rec­om­men­da­tions on the re­cruit­ment process for judges, he did not re­fer to the as­so­ci­a­tion’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to mis­con­duct al­le­ga­tions lev­elled against him over his friend­ship with two con­vict­ed fraud­sters.

“I do not see a di­rect role in the re­cruit­ment process for the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, part­ly to pre­serve the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of ap­pli­cants and part­ly be­cause the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (JLSC) can not be seen to ad­vo­cate or del­e­gate is con­sti­tu­tion­al re­mit,” he said. 

Archie rec­om­mend­ed that the as­so­ci­a­tion work with the Ju­di­cia­ry and its Ju­di­cial Ed­u­ca­tion In­sti­tute to help in­tro­duce con­tin­u­ous ed­u­ca­tion for lawyers as he claimed that re­cent ju­di­cial can­di­dates lacked valu­able crit­i­cal think­ing skills. 

“I make no apol­o­gy for my ap­proach that in all of this the most im­por­tant peo­ple are not the lawyers, even judges, but the peo­ple who we serve,” Archie said. 

The as­so­ci­a­tion is ex­pect­ed to meet on Fri­day for its mem­bers to vote on whether it should ju­di­cial­ly re­view Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s de­ci­sion to ig­nore its re­port and cor­re­spond­ing rec­om­men­da­tion to in­sti­tute im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings against Archie.

CJ’s full speech, A19