Future of CCJ is uncertain – Oscar Ramjeet

Jan 13, 2020 News

Atttorney-at-Law Oscar Ramjeet

The future of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) is uncertain, says veteran Attorney-at-Law Oscar Ramjeet.
Established in 2005, the CCJ now stands as the Court with original jurisdiction for member states of the Caribbean Community, and appellate jurisdiction for only four states, including Guyana.
The majority of member states have not yet adopted the CCJ as the Court with final appellate jurisdiction. Majority of them still use the UK-based Judicial Privy Council (JPC) as their final court of resort. Recently, several referenda from Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines failed to abolish appeals to the Privy Council, leaving the adoption of the CCJ by those states to be uncertain.
Penning a missive to Kaieteur News, Ramjeet noted the Court’s 2019 ruling on Guyana’s No Confidence Motion, which ultimately determined Guyana’s APNU+AFC Government to have been defeated by the December 21, 2018 No-Confidence motion. The Attorney described the decision as lukewarm, as the Court, though ruling unanimously, did not specify a deadline for the holding of the General Election.
The APNU+AFC Government still remains in office, more than a year after being toppled by the motion.
All this Ramjeet asserted to buttress his argument about the uncertainty of the Court’s future.
Guyana’s use of the Court has been plentiful, with 2019 being the second consecutive year that Guyana topped the list of countries filing cases in the Court’s appellate jurisdiction. Guyana also accounted for the majority of all cases with the Trinidad-based Court.
The other countries utilising the Court as its appellate jurisdiction include Barbados, Belize and Dominica.
Outside of that four, the other member states are yet to pave the way for the adoption of the Caribbean Court.
Ramjeet said that only a few years ago, there had been some indication by about seven countries that they would have adopted the CCJ as their final Appellate Court.

Caribbean Court of Justice, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad

“St. Lucia has backed off and Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines have failed to secure referenda for the CCJ to be the final Court… Only Guyana, Barbados, Belize, and Dominica are on board with a combined population of 1.5 million as compared to 5 million from those eight countries that have not yet joined which included the two big countries of Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.”
Noting that there may have emerged “grumblings” from those countries about returns from the Court’s rulings derived from its original jurisdiction given their financial contributions, Ramjeet opined that those countries have only themselves to blame for not taking advantage fully of the appellate division of the Court.
He added that the litigants could save a lot of money using the Trinidad based Court instead of traveling all the way to London.
Presently, even if no other country joined the CCJ’s appellate division, Ramjeet said that the Court is financially sound with about US$100M in the Trust Fund set up by Community governments, keeping it going for at least another two to three decades.
Ramjeet hopes that the Privy Council would at some point refuse to hear cases from the Caribbean, explaining that former UK Supreme Court President, Lord Nick Phillips had expressed his displeasure at the amount of time the Privy Council spent hearing appeals from the region. Even then, he said that the British government would not just sever its ties with the region.

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