THE EDITOR, Sir:

THE BRUCE Golding-led administration is determined to establish a 'special prosecutor'. In addition, it is now making legislative manoeuvres to establish a 'Special Coroner's Court'. As a nation, we must reject the notion of 'special institutions' within the operation of our legal/judicial system.

There are constitutional institutions that exist to carry out these functions. These institutions should be strengthened, not compromised or circumvented. There is absolutely no need to create these special bodies to carry out the functions that the constitution-created institution is doing.

Address shortcomings

There is a Coroner's Act. If cases are taking an inordinately long time to be dealt with by the Coroner's Courts, the answer should not be to create a Special Coroner's Court. It seems sensible to address the shortcomings that exist by doing the obvious; that is, to appoint more resident magistrates, thereby allowing the chief justice to designate some of them to coroner's duty. All this is administrative and does not require new legislation.

The Director of Public Prosecutions is a protected post within the Constitution and so is the tenure of our judges of the Supreme Court. Our resident magistrates being 'public servants' should be appointed via the Public Services Commission (PSC). It is significant to observe that the framers of the Constitution removed Parliament and politicians from the process of making appointments to these posts. Stability, peace and progress are largely dependent upon the independence and integrity of the justice system, real and perceived. The prosecution of crime is an important part of that system; hence, the care the framers of our Constitution took in protecting the post and not littering the system with 'prosecutors'.

Lack of confidence

Where politicians are directly involved in the process of appointments, other than as permitted by the Constitution, the perception or reality of partisan political manipulation will lead to further erosion of public confidence in the system. The lack of confidence in a country's justice system is a seed that grows into general lawlessness, culminating in anarchy. We are already experiencing the effect of low confidence in our justice system. The high incidence of reprisal crimes and vigilante killings and the low level of public cooperation in giving the police information to assist in solving crimes are testimony to the fact.

The prime minister's refusal to accept the recommendations of the constituted body - the PSC - and his subsequent questionable termination of the PSC's members' appointments, increase the scepticism of those who believe the new PSC members are likely to do the bidding of the prime minister, rather than be objective in their assessments. This perception that party politics is influencing appointments where there were constitutional provisions to prevent them can only accelerate the rapidly decreasing confidence in a system.

I am, etc.,

LUCIUS C. WHITE

Tankerville Avenue

Kingston 6