'Banish MPs to Pedro Cays!'
Published:Monday | December 6, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Sheena Gayle, Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Internationally acclaimed Jamaican judge Patrick Robinson has chided political representatives for their failure to sever the island's ties with the United Kingdom-based Privy Council as the final court of appeal.
"Have we no sense of shame and embarrassment?" president of the International Criminal Tribunal, Patrick Robinson, said at the annual Cornwall Bar Association banquet at the Holiday Inn Sunspree Resort in Montego Bay on the weekend.
Several pundits have called upon the Government to replace the Privy Council as Jamaica's final court of appeal, but the governing Jamaica Labour Party said it would only do so by a referendum.
Last year, the Opposition People's National Party called on the Government to table the required legislation in Parliament to revive the process of delinking from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and to have the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) installed as Jamaica's court of last resort.
The Opposition's statement came after president of the Supreme Court in the UK, Lord Nicholas Phillips, called for Caribbean countries to establish their own final court of appeal, and questioned whether some Privy Council cases, including Jamaica's death-row appeals, needed to be heard by a panel of five of Britain's most senior judges, who are tied up for long periods analysing cases.
A two-thirds majority yes vote among members of the House of Representatives is required for the Privy Council to be replaced.
"If we can't find the 40 members of parliament needed to effect the change, I would move that the entire Parliament be banished to the Pedro Cays," an incensed Robinson said to resounding applause.
No movement on ccj
The CCJ, the regional judicial tribunal established nine years ago, was designed to be the final appellate court for member states of the Caribbean Community.
While Jamaica is a signatory to the establishment of the CCJ, the country is yet to utilise its benefits, as cases from Jamaica are still referred to the Privy Council.
Robinson told lawyers gathered at the function that the retention of the Privy Council has deprived Jamaica, and the Caribbean in general, of the opportunity to develop their own jurisprudence.
"The Privy Council is obviously uneconomic, as it is not available to the vast majority of litigants in the country. There are only two categories of litigants who appeal to the Privy Council. First, those who are wealthy or relatively wealthy, and second, appellants in capital murder cases, who benefit from the pro bono services of lawyers in the UK.
"This is a phenomenon that reinforces the divide in the wider society along economic lines," he added.
Robinson concluded that there was every reason to believe that more Jamaicans would, by virtue of the lower economic cost, utilise the Trinidad-based CCJ instead of the Privy Council in London.
The Cornwall Bar Association honoured George Watt and retirees, Justices Howard Cooke and Marva McIntosh, for their long service and dedication to the administration of justice.