A MEMBER OF THE legal fraternity is suggesting that lawyers in the Caribbean may have become complacent and were not working together to tackle regional challenges.
Described by some of his colleagues as “a controversial character”, president of the Trinidad & Tobago Bar Association, Martin Daly, in a feature address at the annual Barbados Bar Association dinner at Royal Pavilion, St James, told the lawyers they had serious challenges which should be addressed urgently.
“As lawyers, we have to ask ourselves if we have become a bit complacent.
“We have problems with preliminary enquiries . . . . Throughout the Caribbean we have challenges in the rule of law and the judiciary every day. And the question we have to ask ourselves as regional lawyers is do we really put our foot down and say that things are wrong?” he asked.
While acknowledging that he would best be able to speak for Trinidad, Daly told those gathered last Friday night he was convinced that objective justice and fairness were “perhaps no longer the order of the day”.
“This, of course, refers to our complacency. I know that Barbados is similar as in Trinidad . . . . As lawyers, we have to ask ourselves whether our societies in the Caribbean are obtaining objective justice and fairness . . . .
“Constantly, we have the same challenges but we are not meeting these challenges as a regional group,” argued Daly.
“Then there is the whole question of sentencing,” he continued. “I am quite offended by the fact that, really, throughout the Caribbean, none of us [has] sat down and worked out a proper regime for non-custodial sentencing. There is the whole question of integrity legislation, which I gather is a contemporary issue in Barbados.”
He suggested lawyers were “not thinking carefully or thinking outside the box”, noting that they needed “radical ideas”. He invited them to challenge every convention on justice since it was difficult to bring about change through indigenous legislation.
“I suspect we haven’t done our best. I suggest we are not succeeding. I would like to suggest that as a region we get together and try to persuade regional governments that justice is actually a public utility and we cannot afford any outages . . . , that they must invest money in this public utility . . . .
“I am taking this opportunity to challenge our general complacency. I want to challenge us as a region. We need to start thinking about justice in the Caribbean, and justice in the Caribbean has a lot more to do than who the hell subscribe to the Caribbean Court of Justice,” Daly said.
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