As we in Jamaica celebrate our fiftieth year as an independent nation, why can't we get it right?
Here we are rightly moving full speed to get rid of the monarchy and all other vestiges of that system including the privy council, then what do we do? Opt to make another external entity, the CCJ our final court!!
I make no bones about the fact that I am no regionalist and I totally respect for the decision that the people made in 1961 and therefore object strongly to all the moves being made to establish federation through the back door. The plain truth however is that all the attempts over the years have not worked for look at how Jamaicans are treated when they go to the other islands.
Just this week too I heard someone from the private sector on radio saying that their organisation has just set about doing been a cost benefit analysis of our relationship with Caricom. I suppose if we did not have a trade deficit of close to a billion dollars, they would never have seen this as a basic necessity.
The fact is, Caricom only benefits the politicians and bureaucrats who gather to have a whale of a time at the various talk shops as they make decisions that affect our lives adversely and make no attempt to explain the implications of these decisions.
As far as I am concerned it was nothing but the anti-Jamaican bias that is prevalent in the region which led to not even one Jamaican judge being selected to sit on the CCJ when it was first established although we had to pay the largest fraction of the initial costs.
Anyway, the fact is we have extremely qualified and competent jurists right here and if we are really interested in true independence, as we talk about divorce from the Privy council, we would not be looking at half steps but would move full speed ahead to deal with the matter properly and in the interest of the Jamaican people, as part of our 50th anniversary celebrations.
Let us have our own final court of appeal right here and what the heck, we can hire judges from other territories if the need arises, as it does in other professions from time to time.
2 comments:
Justice Anderson is now a sitting Jamaican judge at the CCJ as you must know. But I can't think of any reason why the nationality of a judge should matter to you if you are in favour of sticking with the English at the Privy Council. English judges don't favour English litigants any more than Trini judges favour Trini litigants. The law is not a football match where judges support their national teams.
With our experience of the biases shown to Jamaicans by our so-called brothers and sisters in the Caribbean, i would certainly be fearful to have them sit on my case! We need out own final court of appeal, no less.
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