Dawn RitchI AM dead set against the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ). Less than one per cent of all the civil and criminal matters before the courts in Jamaica go to the Privy Council, the court of final appeal it is meant to replace.
Why borrow money overseas, go to tremendous Jamaican taxpayer expense and constitutional change for a statistical inconsequence? This is a complete waste of taxpayer money and parliamentary time.
Indeed it is a crying disgrace. The CCJ makes no sense to me, and certainly no difference to anybody else. Day to day we have traffic accidents, murder, false imprisonment, violent robbery, arson and rape.
INCONSEQUENTIAL
The cost of the Privy Council, or any other court of final appeal is inconsequential, when justice is not served by the day-to-day operation of the local judiciary. Jamaican citizens are locked up in police stations and in jails, some of them never see court for years, and they are simply discovered and freed, and perhaps given a bus fare. Few can afford to sue for false imprisonment. And the bail is so high only a drug dealer can afford it.
Cases are not heard in the courts for four or five years. After they're heard, the court decision can take years more. Justice delayed is justice denied, and the Privy Council or the CCJ won't be able to do a thing about that in Jamaica. Except for those minded, and with the pockets, to pursue justice to the final appeal.
It is therefore a pyrrhic victory for individuals, and a complete sophistry for politicians, to claim that either court affects the proper administration of justice in Jamaica. What is meted out to citizens here on a daily basis by the state, is no more affected than the price of tea in China.
The average citizen is not going to get justice for a ganja spliff, or a stone thrown through the window, because US$25
million is being spent on a new CCJ. Nor the Privy Council for that matter. More than 99 per cent of us will never call upon it.
NEW TIERS OF JUSTICE
It hardly seems sensible therefore to create new tiers of justice, when the first tiers are not functioning properly. We call upon our local police stations and courts every day. One man
voluntarily went to the police station to say someone by his name was wanted, but it wasn't him. They locked him up. In a few days he was hauled before the courts, but the Clerk of the courts couldn't be found. It was suggested that the defendant be held for eight days, but the judge said that was too much and held him for four. When the poor man's case came up again, thank God before a different judge, the birth certificate provided the evidence and the man was set free. So much for doing your duty as a citizen in Jamaica.
Any ruling from the CCJ or the Privy Council to the Jamaican authorities is like a mandate from heaven freely ignored, and sure to encourage bloody-mindedness in all the politicians.
Here in Jamaica, the proper equipment, the better equipment, is no longer a sole dependence upon a sitting judge's meticulously hand-written notes, but accurate transcripts rapidly available to the judges from the court, that would be heaven on earth and justice for Jamaicans and worth the price.
Expenditure on forensic equipment, X-ray machines, a proper filing system for the Supreme Court, benches outside the Sutton Street Magistrate's Court where most of us go anyway, but not a dime for the CCJ.
BORROWED MONEY
But the Government and Her Majesty's loyal Opposition have already reached agreement to spend US$25 million of borrowed money to establish a CCJ for less than 1 per cent of the Jamaican population. They need to have their heads examined hopefully not at taxpayer expense.
The rights of the people are not to be sold for a mess of
pottage, nor bartered nor compromised in any way. No public education campaign is needed. The members of the House of Representatives must stop this horse-trading, because it is
having a brutalising effect upon the lives of the Jamaican people.
RESOURCES BEING DIVERTED
Resources are being diverted from desperate national needs into a vain-glorious, symbol-grabbing irrelevance certain to do more harm than good.
And I don't even care if it's colonialism's fault according to anybody's lights.
By the time both sides of the House have finished dissecting the matter, nobody will understand a word of what is going on. Worse yet, nobody will care except a few NGO's, dutifully defending the Jamaican people in spite of themselves, and anybody's politics including their own. All this while, the two major political parties enjoy their leisurely transition to new leadership, whether good or bad who knows.
As far as I'm concerned, both parties have disqualified themselves from being able to say a further word on the matter of the CCJ. The Privy Council has ruled that the Jamaican Government acted unconstitutionally in setting up the CCJ; and what it has done is void.
We all know that the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) has its permutations and combinations on the subject. But the local NGOs spearheaded the action to the Privy Council, and to them is due the acknowledgement and gratitude for having saved our rights under the Jamaican Constitution.
Let the record show that both the People's National Party and the JLP parliamentary members have already agreed to colossal expenditure on the CCJ, even for ten years, to establish a bureaucracy that doesn't matter a row of pins to our daily lives.
Both sides of the House are no doubt overcome by too great a preponderance of lawyers feeling themselves in need of occupation. And all this while, the country goes up in smoke.
