By Beresford Hay, ContributorTHE GOVERNMENT is gambling with Jamaica's judicial destiny. It seems that cutting a Caribbean profile is preferable to good governance at home and that regional integration is being actively pursued even in the face of national disintegration.
Government does not intend to 'patriate' the final plank of our independence judicial sovereignty. It intends to dilute it and transfer it to an alliance not dissimilar to one which the people had effectively rejected over 40 years ago. Why should this coalition of judicial convenience be more permanent than its predecessor? Already there are rumblings.
In any event, there are serious issues and vital information to be placed before the people and important questions to be answered by the Government as to the options available for a final Court of Appeal. Should it remain yonder or should it be regional or national? This is so whether a referendum is to be held or not. Inform, educate and consult the people. The half-cocked pro-Caribbean Court of Appeal (CCJ) propaganda campaign in which ignorance is preached to the ignorant is abhorrent.
Isn't it strange how suddenly a deafening hush has fallen over those who were most vocal in their concerns about the CCJ? Have they been silenced, converted, absorbed, subsumed or neutralised? Or, is it a strategic silence? And, what of the Opposition? Is it opposing or compromising?
Press reports indicate that Attorney-General A.J. Nicholson is ecstatic over recent events in New Zealand, where the government against the popular wish, without holding a referendum, and to the great distress of many including the indigenous Maoris, by a whisker-thin majority, rammed legislation through Parliament abolishing appeals to the Privy Council and establishing a new final Court of Appeal in New Zealand.
Note, however, that what happens in New Zealand is quite different from what is taking place in Jamaica. That country has effectively 'patriated' its final court, a local and not a regional court is being established, the options were fully explained to the people and are pellucidly clear and the government does not intend to squander its judicial sovereignty by establishing a regional court with Tonga, Fiji, Samoa, or any of its delightful netball and rugby-playing neighbours.
A recent survey by the University of the West Indies showed how ignorant Jamaicans were about Caribbean affairs, including the CCJ, but fell into error when it sought and purported to elicit the preference for the CCJ vis-a-vis a 'Jamaican Supreme Court' l when the form, composition and vision of a final Jamaican Court of Appeal has never been conceptualised, identified or articulated. From afar this seems an unfair question.
Jamaica needs a national final Court of Appeal as a centrepiece for fundamental legal and judicial reforms. Don't gamble with justice.
Beresford Hay (P.O. Box 1191, Kingston 8) is an occasional contributor.
