The CCJ: The horror house a small country is

Oct 31, 2012 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Three new judges have been appointed two days ago. In this country whenever you talk about justice and the judiciary, you thank your lucky stars that there is the Caribbean Court of Appeal (the Caribbean Court of Justice or CCJ). But ironically, among the masses of the CARICOM region, the CCJ has little appeal.
John Public seems to want to cling to the Privy Council. Why? Let’s discuss political theory.
What do you find when you make the comparison of a small country with a large industrial land with hundreds of millions of inhabitants? At first instance, your choice would be the smaller territory. From the time the ancient Greek philosophers roamed the streets of the City-State and preached about justice and government, people have been attracted to little countries where they feel life can be less stressful and more rewarding in terms of human relationship.
The famous actor, Marlon Brando, chose one of the smallest European countries, Ireland, as the place he wanted to live out his life.
After the Second World War, and decolonization in the Third World, industrial Europe and the USA became the pull for the people of the developing world.
Migration out of the Third World increased on a mass scale. It became frenetic after the collapse of the Cold War and the rise of isolationism among the great powers of the world.
The motive for leaving was economic. Third World people flooded to the US and Canada in search of a better life. At the same time, decolonization didn’t bring the paradise that the non-white world had hoped for. Small was beautiful, but small was also full of ugly things. Those who left the developing nations weren’t coming back, and they weren’t coming back for reasons that had much more than economic motivation. The small, thinly populated Third World states were also political and sociological tragedies, an image that influential international writer, VS Naipaul, helped to spread
The post-colonial leader was a law unto himself and justice was goodies to be shared out by him and his acolytes.
The story of justice is one of the biggest tragedies of small states. Is size an essential component for the existence of the equitable distribution of justice? In other words, can justice be achieved in territories where there aren’t too many citizens?
To put it another way; aren’t smallness and justice antithetical? A helpful guide in answering this question is the almost non-recognition of the Caribbean Court of Justice among the population of CARICOM. After about fifty years of sovereignty, only three CARICOM nations submit to the jurisdiction of the CCJ. Of those three, Belize joined a few months ago (Barbados and Guyana are the others). The rest of CARICOM states recognize the Privy Council based in London.
It is not going to be easy for any government in CARICOM to win a referendum on replacing the Privy Council with the CCJ. The argument of CCJ advocates is that those who want to stick with the Privy Council have not broken away from colonial thinking. This is not so.
It has to do with how Caribbean citizens see justice in a small country. CARICOM citizens feel that their local judges do not meet the standards of the white man in London; that the white UK judge does not know the rich and powerful in CARICOM states; that the white UK judge will not be intimidated by telephone calls from a Caribbean office; that the white UK judge will not be enticed by a bribe.
It is my opinion that in a referendum, the anti-CCJ bandwagon will win if they use these kinds of arguments.
Caribbean people feel that they can more get justice from a group of white judges in London than in their own nations.
The argument is not without its merits. This writer would vote tomorrow for the replacement of the Privy Council by the CCJ in CARICOM counties, but bitter experience in his own country makes him understand how the citizens in the rest of CARICOM feel. I know that a judge appealed to the President of Guyana when a duty free letter was refused. I saw a judge openly dining with a particular lawyer at New Thriving.
Surely that doesn’t look good, even though it may be innocent.
I know a judge who refused to hear a petition for bail after three days of the accused being on remand on a minor traffic offence that does not carry a custodial sentence.
President Jagdeo’s libel case came to trial eleven months after papers were filed. The CCJ may be going nowhere fast.

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