Vincentian senator criticises CCJ judge over reference to Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, CMC — Justice David Hayton, a United Kingdom-born judge on the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), has come in for criticism over comments made during last Friday’s ceremonial sitting of the court held in St Vincent.

Opposition senator Kay Bacchus-Baptiste has criticised Hayton over his quotation of lyrics from Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” stating that “emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds” and his larger point about the anti-CCJ position of some political parties in the region.

Bacchus-Baptiste pointed out that Hayton is “a white man — not a Caribbean man” and said that his reference to the song “[is] in a way, it is an insult to our people”.

“Our people are emancipated enough to know that we do not agree to something simply because it gets rid of the white man. We do not agree to go to the CCJ because you would be saying, ‘Oh, we are free; we have gotten rid of the white man’s court. We are emancipated enough to know that. So, to say that the reason why all of the OECS, … and the Caribbean save Dominica and Barbados, have not made the CCJ the final court, it is a real, real reason,” Bacchus-Baptiste said on a local radio station.

Thirteen years after the establishment of the CCJ, only four nations, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, and Guyana, have replaced the UK-based Privy Council’s appellate jurisdiction with that of the regional court.

When given a chance to do so in a referendum in 2009, the Vincentian electorate rejected such a change, among other proposed amendments of the Constitution left by the British at Independence in 1979.

The Privy Council-CCJ debate has been given new life with the elevation of Vincentian jurist, Justice Adrian Saunders to its apex in its third presidency.

All of the previous presidents of the court have come from countries that have not signed on to its final appellate jurisdiction, including Trinidad and Tobago, where it is headquartered.

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