Government shouldn’t change the rules to stop the Prime Minister from having the major say in who should be appointed a judge.
Attorney-at-law Ralph Thorne, QC, took this position yesterday, delivering a lecture in the Grande Salle of the Tom Adams Financial Centre in Bridgetown.
This position appeared to clash with that of new president of the Barbados Bar Association Andrew Pilgrim, who complained that there was too much political interference with the selection of judges.
Thorne told the gathering, including several Combermere School students, that the 1974 constitutional amendment which “empowered the Prime Minister to appoint judges” was an improvement on a situation where the appointment of judges “could have been done at somebody’s dinner table” and favoured the “old boys’ club”.
“I myself think that prime ministerial appointment is the most transparent [form],” he said.
“I support it because a Prime Minister is accountable to the public because the Prime Minister has to go back to them.
“The Judicial (Services) Commission that used to appoint judges had to go back to no one except the person sitting at the head of the mahogany table . . . and he could have chosen a friend [or] the son of a friend. He could have chosen people who went to only one school.”
Thorne said the Prime Minister and the Judicial Services Commission might pick a good or bad person as a judge.
“But at the end of the day, my concern is that the appointer must be accountable to his public and that is why I think [the right to appoint] is best reserved for the Prime Minister,” he said.
Thorne’s lecture was on The Constitution, The Citizen, Cultural Values And Justice For All. It was hosted by the University of the West Indies and the Central Bank of Barbados.
Last week, Pilgrim complained about the system used in appointing judges.
“What you need is to distance the appointment as much as possible from the political directorate,” he suggested.
“You really need a body that is chaired by a person who does not rely on the PM [Prime Minister] or the AG [Attorney General] to appoint them and appointees who hold their power regardless of the change of Government . . . .”
The decision should be seen as “transparent and distant from the Cabinet or the Prime Minister”, Pilgrim argued.
His comments came against the background of reports which indicated Government would be going to Parliament soon to amend the Supreme Court of Judicature Act to facilitate the appointment of Marston Gibson, who does not meet all of the appointment criteria under the law, as the next Chief Justice.
