Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

The Caribbean Court of Jus­tice has the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to reach out to con­vince the peo­ple of the re­gion, based on the record of the Court, that the judges and the CCJ have the ca­pac­i­ty ei­ther to as­sist the ad­vance of the in­te­gra­tion move­ment or to al­low it to lapse in­to di­vi­sive­ness and fail­ure to achieve its ob­jec­tives of full na­tion­hood.

To achieve the above goal, the CCJ has to make its ex­is­tence and func­tion­ing tru­ly mean­ing­ful to the re­gion based on the qual­i­ty and fair­ness of its judg­ments, and the in­de­pen­dence of the Court from neg­a­tive po­lit­i­cal, com­mer­cial and oth­er forms of po­ten­tial in­flu­ences.

While the fo­cus of the out­reach must be di­rect­ed to the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Ja­maica, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Grena­da, St Kitts and Nevis, and The Ba­hamas, whose gov­ern­ments con­tin­ue to “loi­ter on the steps of the British Privy Coun­cil” - Sir Shri­dath Ram­phal, the ef­fort must be spread to the cit­i­zens of all mem­ber states to re­as­sure of the right­ness of the ac­tion of their gov­ern­ments which have been con­fi­dent enough of their in­de­pen­dent selves to have the CCJ as the fi­nal court of ap­peal in its twin ju­ris­dic­tions: orig­i­nal and ap­pel­late.

More­over, as re­mind­ed by Ja­maica’s Prime Min­is­ter, PJ Pat­ter­son, more than a decade ago, the de­ci­sion to es­tab­lish the Ap­pel­late Ju­ris­dic­tion of the CCJ was tak­en by lead­ers of all mem­ber states, and so binds them all to in­evitably adopt the court in its two ju­ris­dic­tions.

What is be­ing ad­vo­cat­ed here is not an an­ti-Privy Coun­cil cam­paign, but rather a re­minder to a peo­ple that they owe it to them­selves and the gen­er­a­tions to come, the right to be­ing a tru­ly in­de­pen­dent group of na­tions locked to­geth­er in a com­mon fu­ture.

The is­sue is how the Pres­i­dent and the judges of the CCJ em­bark on such a right­eous jour­ney. First, they must come to the de­lib­er­ate de­ci­sion that the Court has a man­date to em­bark up­on such a course of ac­tion to achieve what it was de­signed for.

For­mer Ja­maica Prime Min­is­ter PJ Pat­ter­son, at a con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain more than ten years ago, as­sert­ed that the lead­ers, by their own agree­ment, have com­mit­ted to the CCJ in both ju­ris­dic­tions.

“Af­ter 50 years of po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence, the two most pop­u­lous and ar­guably most ad­vanced so­cial, po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic states of Cari­com—Ja­maica and Trinidad and To­ba­go—con­tin­ue to hang on to that most colo­nial of ves­tiges, the British Privy Coun­cil, as their fi­nal court of ap­peal.”

Dur­ing his tenure, Pres­i­dent of the CCJ, Sir Den­nis By­ron, held a con­fer­ence for jour­nal­ists across the re­gion here in Port-of-Spain to in­form them of the Court, its es­tab­lish­ment and pur­pos­es, as a means of re­mind­ing them of their own re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the peo­ple of the re­gion in re­la­tion to the CCJ.

Against the back­ground of the ex­pressed view that the CCJ was lack­ing be­cause of the ab­sence of In­do-Caribbean judges on the Court (which was dealt with last week), Sir By­ron took on the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­gage in dis­cus­sions with the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Ma­ha Sab­ha, Sat­nar­ine Ma­haraj, to in­form him of the op­er­a­tions and in­tegri­ty of the Court; that dis­cus­sion must con­tin­ue.

A se­lec­tion of the most pow­er­ful and in­de­pen­dent of judg­ments by the CCJ, now that it has been in ex­is­tence for two decades, must be shared for knowl­edge and scruti­ny by the peo­ple of the re­gion. Such an in­for­ma­tion-shar­ing cam­paign will place Cari­com cit­i­zens in a po­si­tion to make their own as­sess­ments of the in­de­pen­dence and qual­i­ty of the Court, rather than de­pend­ing on the state­ments of their lead­ers who have made de­ci­sions on neg­a­tive cri­te­ria.

Suc­ceed­ing chief jus­tices of Trinidad and To­ba­go have done sim­i­lar­ly; they at­tempt to sell the virtues, ca­pac­i­ty and achieve­ments and its fail­ures, and the need for greater at­ten­tion to be paid to the Jus­tice Sys­tem.

Once again, the Court must, among sev­er­al oth­er ef­forts, en­gage with re­porters and jour­nal­ists from across the re­gion, to in­form, even to ed­u­cate them about the CCJ, its his­to­ry, the fact that all of Cari­com in de­cid­ing to es­tab­lish the Court, agreed with the Ap­pel­late Di­vi­sion of the Court, and the ul­ti­mate in­ten­tion of hav­ing it re­place the British Privy Coun­cil.

Of im­por­tance is for a re­flec­tion on the his­to­ry of the West In­di­an Fed­er­a­tion- 1958-1962—and its fail­ures. One of its de­fi­cien­cies was its lack of an in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tion such as the CCJ to ad­vise and rule on in­su­lar­i­ty and the nar­row self-in­ter­est of politi­cians.

His­to­ri­an Pro­fes­sor Roy Augi­er told his stu­dents at Mona in the ear­ly 1980s that Alexan­der Bus­ta­mante, then leader of the op­po­si­tion in Ja­maica, cam­paigned against the Fed­er­a­tion, say­ing that it meant a Ja­maican farmer with six goats had to give three of them to poor farm­ers in the East­ern Caribbean. And T&T’s Pre­mier con­clud­ed his fa­mous arith­meti­cal cal­cu­la­tion that “one from ten leaves naught”.

The mod­ern ex­cus­es not to ful­ly ac­cept the CCJ are of the same na­ture; we can­not con­tin­ue stand­ing in one place.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er – free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host, and News Di­rec­tor at TTT; pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad; cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press; grad­u­ate of UWI, Cari­mac, Mona, and St Au­gus­tine – In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.