Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the As­sem­bly of South­ern Lawyers (ASL) Saira Lakhan has called for a smooth and trans­par­ent tran­si­tion process af­ter Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie an­nounced his re­tire­ment yes­ter­day.

Af­ter 17 years of lead­ing the Ju­di­cia­ry, Archie has an­nounced that he will re­tire dur­ing this law term. He said when he be­came Chief Jus­tice in 2008, the re­tire­ment age was 65, and that is what he pre­pared for. The manda­to­ry re­tire­ment age is now 70 years.

How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted that in the last two years, he has seen his life’s jour­ney with greater clar­i­ty, and while be­ing Chief Jus­tice is what he does, it’s not who he is. He al­so be­lieves that it is time for fresh ideas for the Ju­di­cia­ry and is pass­ing on the ba­ton.

In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Lakhan not­ed that the Chief Jus­tice has borne the dual re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of shap­ing ju­rispru­dence while man­ag­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Ju­di­cia­ry “un­der of­ten chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances”.

Lakhan un­der­scored the on­go­ing chal­lenges with­in the jus­tice sys­tem. “His stew­ard­ship of the Ju­di­cia­ry dur­ing his tenure has con­tributed to the con­tin­ued strength­en­ing of the rule of law in our na­tion. At the same time, we ac­knowl­edge that the Ju­di­cia­ry con­tin­ues to face press­ing chal­lenges, in­clud­ing in­fra­struc­tur­al de­fi­cien­cies, case back­logs, and the ur­gent need for mod­erni­sa­tion and ad­e­quate re­sourc­ing.”

She al­so called for struc­tur­al re­forms that would al­low fu­ture chief jus­tices to fo­cus pri­mar­i­ly on their ju­di­cial func­tions and point­ed to the pro­posed of­fice of the chan­cel­lor as one such mea­sure.

On Mon­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­firmed that leg­is­la­tion for the es­tab­lish­ment of the of­fice will be brought to Par­lia­ment be­fore the end of this year.

Guardian Me­dia is still await­ing a re­sponse from the pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Lynette See­baran-Suite, on Archie’s re­tire­ment.