Connection To British Court An Impediment To Justice

by Makeda Mikael

The Gaston Browne Government’s Attorney General endorses the Caribbean Court of Justice with such passion that those who are wont to disparage his actions are left to wonder why he would leave the British system which in-built delay works so well for his government.

Whatever has triggered this will to depart from the system which raised him and which allows the Executive to administer of the business of both Courts in the OECS Circuit? So whatever the reason, the will of the A.G. to take the hands of the Executive completely off the business of the Judiciary is worthy of praise.

Our confidence in the ability of Caribbean jurists who climb past the Bar and onto the Bench has become quite tainted as politicians have breached the protocols which go with the legal system and is expected to preempt collusion between the three arms of Government.

Having engineered the Executive to equate the Legislature by its including all of the same Parliamentarians, the administration of the Judiciary is in the less reputable hands the Executive.

The irresponsibility of the Executive has trickled down and become the responsibility Judiciary, and the culture of delay grafted into an inefficient Court system by the Executive has become standard in the Courts and the Judiciary.

Ridding the Judiciary of the politics of the Executive will give our Court the freedom to un-corrupt the administration of the Courts, thereby reducing the delay factor which is integral to corruption.

Further the Judiciary being whole and independent of the Executive and the Legislature will find a voice beyond just Judgments, and our Court will finally have its own Apex Court.

Never having been independent, our Judiciary has been forced to be silent on everything including what they do, and by whose request, and whose whispers, thereby implicating themselves by association.

Judges are lawyers-in-waiting as in the British system, but as long as we are tied to the British Privy Council of old white men and women, full of white English legal wisdom, drafted with all good intent to keep Brittania rule of law over the islands of the English speaking Caribbean, we cannot call ourselves independent.

And yes, colour and race matters, as long as it is visible and contrasted with still ongoing benefits of slavery juxtaposed with the poverty of the remnants of African enslavement in the islands.

How can we reform our law which is not ours and expect the owner to side with us when we go to the Privy Council. Justice is at the core of all existence, and if small dis-united islands like ours are all or mostly governed by the culture and standards of a foreign entity which enslaved us for four hundred years under these same laws, where is the Justice?

The colonies still represent a large investment to Britain, and the laws protect them and in particular against the islands and their majority black former enslaved Africans.

What makes us think that because some of us have pulled ourselves up by the boot straps (without boots) that the consciousness of our colonial masters really looks at us in any other light besides that of the dark plantation.

If the matter does not touch their property we might get a pat on the head, but the laws of Master and Slave (converted to servant) still rule the consciousness of those who hold dominance through the Privy Council

Try explaining to a child that the wolf has only come have to tea with Little Red Riding Hood!

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