And in regional news - we now go back to last week's interview with former President of the CCJ Adrian Saunders.
The court was designed to be the apex court for all CARICOM nations but currently only 5 countries, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Guyana, and Saint Lucia accept it as their court of final appeal.
We asked Saunders, who sat on the court for 20 years and who led it for 7 years why more of the 15 CARICOM nations have not adopted it. Here's how that back and forth went:
Jules Vasquez
"Why is it that still only a handful of countries have adopted the CCJ as its court of final appeal?"
Justice Adrian Saunders, Former President - CCJ
"Right, that there are a number of different factors in some countries, the Constitution places tremendous hurdles to dealing from the Privy Council in Antigua and Barbuda and in Grenada for example, you not only need two thirds, at least a two thirds vote at the House of Assembly at the Parliament, which is par for the course. But you also need a two thirds vote at a referendum, at the popular referendum. So Grenada and I, I must pay tribute to Prime Minister Keith Mitchell. He tried twice and on each occasion that he tried, he had all the seats. His party won all the seats in the Parliament said - although 100% of the parliament said - we want to go to the CCJ, he still had to go to a referendum and he couldn't get two thirds because it's difficult to get two thirds on an issue that can be controversial. it ought not to be, but it can be. And how it can be that opposition parties sometimes would place impossible demands before the government to say, well, unless you do such and such, we will not tell our supporters to vote for this, right bill? And so he failed on both occasions."
"Well, if they had been full throated in favor, Jamaica would have been on. And quite frankly, if Jamaica could become a republic and can accede to the CCJ in one fell swoop, that would be a tremendous feather in the cap of the Prime Minister of Jamaica. It would make him, I think, one of the foremost leaders of decolonization that Jamaica has ever seen. And it will take time for us to see whether, you know, that that would happen."
"Nevertheless, it is of great influence to the judges from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the other smaller islands that are part of Caricom, and they follow that jurisprudence so that it has that influence."
The recent victory of the JLP Party in Jamaica does not bode well for that country's adoption of the CCJ - since JLP is considered anti-CCJ.
