Dominica faces one more hurdle to CCJ

Tue Feb 04, 2013

EDITOR: The UK government has given the greenlight for the Commonwealth of Dominica to abolish appeals to the Privy Council and accept the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) as the final court, but there is still one more hurdle before the country can do so.

The country will now have to pass legislation to do so and efforts to contact the country’s attorney general as well as the prime minister as to when this will be done were futile. Two emails were unanswered.{{more}}

Dominica will have to amend its constitution and can only do so if a three-quarter majority of the elected members vote in favour of the amendment. I do not see this will be a problem for the Roosevelt Skerrit administration since it controls 18 of the 21 seats. However the government cannot reach its objective in a hurry. There must be full readings of the bill and between the first and second reading there must be a 90 day period before it is fully debated.

So far only three of the 12 countries in the region have abolished appeals to the privy council and accepted the CCJ as its final court. They are: Guyana, Barbados and Belize.

The British Virgin Islands and the other two UK Overseas Dependant Territories in the Eastern Caribbean, Montserrat, and Anguilla, are part of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, and they have to wait on the directive of the UK government whether or not to join the CCJ, this is not likely since the Privy Council is presided by British Law Lords.

Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, and St Vincent and the Grenadines require a referendum before they can join. The Ralph Gonsalves administration three years ago failed to get a mandate from his electorates to join the regional court, but I am of the view that the referendum was not successful because it was packed with other initiatives including removing the Queen as the Head of State. The two big countries, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago which were in the forefront towards the establishment of the regional court are still debating whether or not they should get rid of the Privy Council as the final court.

Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar intimated that she will go only half way by abolishing only criminal appeals to the Privy Council, but after nearly two years no step has been taken in this regard.

A senior judge of the regional court, Rolston Nelson, told broadcasters three weeks ago that judgment of the CCJ sitting in its original jurisdiction cannot be enforced since there is no mechanism to do so. This should be corrected as expeditiously as possible.

Oscar Ramjeet