Panton slams retention of Privy Council
Published:Thursday | August 4, 2022 | 9:12 AM
Former president of the Court of Appeal in Jamaica, retired Justice Seymour Panton, has declared that the legacy of Jamaica's policymakers will be stained by their insistence on clinging to the coat-tails of the Privy Council.
Addressing past and current members of the judiciary at the 60th anniversary of the Court of Appeal Wednesday evening at the Pegasus hotel in New Kingston, Panton described Jamaica's final court as an anachronism.
He warned that the national psyche is being “adversely affected by this stubborn attachment to the Privy Council.
“The policymakers should start thinking what they will tell their grandchildren in relation to this fond attachment,” he said.
Referencing Namibia, whose leader cancelled his visit to Jamaica this week to deal with domestic strife back home, Panton said the African country with a population of 2.6 million people got its independence 32 years ago.
He noted that “they have not outsourced their judicial business to their former colonial masters”.
He said that Jamaica could also learn lessons from Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, pointing out that those three countries were attached to the Privy Council but have severed ties.
However, he noted that the citizens from those countries can “just walk into the United Kingdom anytime”.
He said that Jamaica has the Privy Council as its final court, yet its citizens have to “pay expensively and line up to receive or be denied a visa to go to the United Kingdom and our parliamentarians, all of them, need to process these matters in their minds.
“The parliamentarians need to wake up and think on these things,” he charged.
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