Proper focus on CCJ is critical

THE EDITOR, Madam:

The statement that has recently surfaced out of the blue from the Privy Council, through its president, Lord Reed, encouraging Jamaicans to continue using the services of the court, would have raised eyebrows. From whence was derived this peculiar notion that “the Privy Council and the CCJ can exist side by side”? Why, indeed, would the establishment of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) have been deemed necessary?

In the highest echelons of Jamaica’s judiciary in the Privy Council, a bewildering query has arisen as to whether, in 2009 when momentous pronouncements were made by Lord Phillips, the inaugural president of the UK Supreme Court, concerning the delivery of service by the senior judges, his declarations were made strictly from his own personal perspective.

However, the proper focus that should concern the government and people of Jamaica is the historic, developmental message, and warning, that Lord Phillips carefully and plainly delivered through that same interview, concerning their continued welcome at the Privy Council, and his more than subtle encouragement to embrace the appellate jurisdiction of the CCJ.

It cannot be successfully contended that, when Lord Phillips tactfully advised that, “in an ideal world” the few remaining independent territories would stop using the Privy Council and make use of a final court of their own making, he was speaking only for himself.

Surely, that was not a view confined to him; it was certainly not new. That, with unassailable reasons, has been the stated position of Privy Council judges and others in authority in the United Kingdom (UK) from the beginning and for the almost 200 years of the court’s existence.

That position coincided with that of visionary leaders in the region, including the British governors of the Caribbean colonies who, at their meeting at Bridgetown in 1947, recommended in their report, among other things, that there should be a regional final appeal court to replace the Privy Council. And that prudent position enjoyed consensus right across the political divide in Jamaica for decades.

Is that not what should engage the attention of the government, who, continuing its defiance of the ruling of the Privy Council, still shockingly insists on the holding of an expensive, danger-laden, needless referendum for Jamaicans to seek the embrace of their own regional court, itself having long received international acclaim, and embrace?

The fundamental issues are: Access to our final court, without barriers, and moving on the decolonisation process. Are those pursuits not clearly deterred by urgings for the retention of Privy Council appeals, widely regarded as anachronistic, certainly in the UK?

That is the direction in which the recent interest of the Privy Council judges is conspicuously pointed, and which has magnetised the attention, and agreement, of the Jamaican government which remains unconcerned about the rights, privileges and benefits that have long been denied to the Jamaican people whom they are sworn to serve.

DOUGLAS LEYS

Attorney-at-law