Constitutional Reform Committee and CCJ

THE EDITOR, Madam:

Sporadic news items continue to emerge from the Constitutional Reform Committee (CRC) (which I cannot help but note is struggling to gain widespread public acceptance) has said that there will come a time for them to engage in “discussions” concerning Jamaica’s final appeal court. But, to what end?

The issues have long been distilled and the solution has long been at our fingertips. Drilled down, there is need to contemplate perhaps no more than four settled, eye-opening issues, eliciting three comments and an answer which are all irrefutable.

Issue #1: A mere one or two petitions are heard annually by Jamaica’s final appeal court in the United Kingdom, a court that has been inaccessible and unaffordable to generations of our people.

Comment: Such an insupportable situation represents an unsettling stumbling block in the way of the required development of our jurisprudence as a practising democracy.

Issue #2: The judges of the Privy Council, advisers to the monarch, our head of state, constantly declare, and warn, that their strong preference is for Jamaica to make other arrangements for their final appeals to be heard.

Comment: We therefore continue, despite being in our seventh decade as an independent nation, to shamelessly hang on, loitering at the doorstep of our court of last resort where we have been told in unambiguous terms that we are not welcome.

Issue #3: Jamaica’s one and only alternative to the Privy Council is the internationally acclaimed Caribbean Court of Justice which will be accessible and affordable to all prospective petitioners.

Comment: In-depth study has long concluded that the only other theoretically possible alternative - a local final court - could not attain the required and acceptable global standards and is, in any event, completely unaffordable.

Issue #4: What then is the required remedy for this intolerable situation to be put behind us as a matter of obvious urgency?

Comment: By a consensus vote in each House of Parliament to give approval to bills that were drafted some eight years ago, designed to amend the Constitution for Jamaica to delink from the Privy Council and embrace the appellate jurisdiction of the Caribbean Court of Justice.

So, what else is there for the CRC, or any other entity, to “discuss”? Has Jamaica not been waiting for years to be told of any, or any appropriate, alternative arrangement or decision that could be arrived at?

And that wait has been, and will continue to be, in vain; because, practically, there is no other possibility!

DOUGLAS LEYS

Attorney-at-law