Yes to A Final Court of Appeal in Jamaica

Ever since "Dudusgate", I have been having a problem with Bruce Golding remaining as prime minister, but I must say I am with him in his most recent suggestion that Jamaica opts for its own final court of appeal to replace the Privy Council, rather than going ahead with the Caribbean Court of Appeal.

You see, as far as any form of Caribbean unity is concerned, I have long ago agreed with the results of the federation in 1961 when Jamaicans voted to go it alone rather than federating with the other islands of the former British West Indies. Therefore I have always resented the attempts by especially the PNP government to reverse that decision via the back door. You see, I am very aware that the people in the other islands just do not like us and each time our government does something with them, it usually proves to be nothing but a very costly "suck up" to the other islands.

An example of some costly suck ups are Caricom and the fiasco of the cricket world cup some years ago. As to the Caricom, every other nation in the group seems to have benefited from it except us. But that's understandable, for do you see the type of resistance they put up whenever we try to get our products into their territories? Check the "patty " issue the other day. Trinidad fought tooth and nail to try and keep out our patties even implying that they were being manufactured under insanitary conditions. But our supermarkets and stores are over flowing with Trinidadian goods. When the "patty" issue arose, I publicly called on Jamaicans to boycott Trinidadian goods, but I may as well have said so in my bathroom for Jamaicans ! Even when the Trinidadian prime minister dissed us all after hurricane Nicole, we resisted the loud calls to boycott their products.

Anyway back to this Caribbean Court of Justice, (which was just another case of former prime minister PJ Patterson putting the interest of the other island above ours, for although our courts are sadly lacking funds to keep them going, he refused to attend to those pressing problems while going ahead to to borrow funds to set up that white elephant.). We put up US$33 million of the US$100 million cost of the court, but guess what, they did not even appoint one Jamaican to the court while appointing two Guyanese. And if you think they have superior intellectuals to us, look who they rejected....... the former head of the law faculty based in Barbados, a Jamaican who has been key into the training lawyers in all the territories and also our former President of the Court of Appeal. I don't see how any Jamaican with an ounce of self respect could continue to support these regional bodies.

Yes by all means lets leave the Privy Council for after almost 50 years, we should be more than capable of handling our own affairs so lets get to it.

I hope we will be having a referendum on the matter soon . We need to be vigilant however that the judges to be appointed to the final court of appeal are protected from any form of political intereference or pressure and this should be entrenched in the Constitution.