IT IS A SAD COMMENTARY on our sense of political freedom and nation-building after emancipation from slavery in the English-speaking Caribbean that the first two colonies in this region to be declared independent from Britain – Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago – should still be engaged in the semantics about maintaining constitutional ties with Britain’s Privy Council as their final court.
While maintaining “sweet talk” about their partnership in teaming up with the rest of independent countries of our Caribbean Community, the disappointing reality is that both Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, which gained their political independence within three weeks of each other and remain the two leading financial contributors to the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), are still clumsily, if not painfully, haggling about reservations in placing ultimate confidence in the CCJ.
So far as Jamaica is concerned, the prevailing “non-CCJ” status quo is primarily due to failures of both major political parties while in government – Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and People’s National Party (PNP). At present, when there is understandable heavy political focus on arrangements for the country’s new parliamentary elections within the first quarter of 2016, there are more local political theatrics to seemingly justify delaying Jamaica’s overdue access of CCJ’s membership as its court of last resort.
It is left to be seen when the new People’s National Movement administration under the leadership of Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley will put in place practical arrangements to access CCJ membership for Trinidad and Tobago.
Meanwhile, as CARICOM states struggle to overcome regional obstacles to widen the membership of the CCJ, these countries also continue to reveal lingering disagreements in arriving at a consensus candidate for a new secretary general of the 53-member Commonwealth later this month in Malta, where various heads of government from this region will be in attendance. Among them would be CARICOM’s current chairman, Prime Minister Freundel Stuart of Barbados, and Dr Rowley.
The Malta Summit, which begins next Friday would be expected to consider new policies and programmes the countries could employ to combat the spreading terrorism from the jihadists. However, a primary challenging issue for this month’s Commonwealth Summit remains a fierce and crucial four-way contest for a successor to India’s outgoing two-term secretary general Kamalesh Sharma.
Currently, the five candidates include two from Commonwealth nations in Africa, and also two from the Commonwealth Caribbean. Then last week, it emerged that a former one-term leader of Australia’s liberal party, Alexander Downer, had also thrown his hat into the ring for election.
From Africa, the candidates are Mmasekgoa Masire-Mwamba of Botswana (former deputy secretary general of the Commonwealth) and Bernard Membe, Foreign Minister of Tanzania. The Caribbean candidates are Sir Ronald Sanders (long-serving diplomat of Antigua & Barbuda in Britain and senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies), and Dominican-born Baroness Patricia Scotland (former attorney general of the United Kingdom).
• Rickey Singh is a noted Caribbean journalist.
