Two things stood out for me this week that, on the surface, have little to do with each other, but both have the potential to make Barbados a better country and put the proverbial icing on the cake of its development, especially as its prepares to come out of the economic recession that has dogged the world for nearly six years.
Those two things are the backlog of court cases that Queen’s Counsel Alair Shepherd spoke about in painful terms on Saturday, and the fact that Barbados is among the lowly ranked countries in the world when it comes to fostering a business facilitation environment. Both have implications for each individual Barbadian and for the country’s reputation in the international arena.
In the matter of court gridlock, Shepherd has said that he depended on clients to come to him so he could make a living; so as a result of having to await judges’ decisions for prolonged periods of time, his livelihood and that of many other lawyers was under threat, while justice itself was being denied.
It is now the norm for cases to be “frozen in time”, according to Shepherd, who suggested that matters could be accelerated if the ten or so judges in Barbados became more specialized in areas like family, tax and maritime law.
With 1 700 to 2 000 new cases being filed in the Barbados court system annually, Chief Justice Sir Marston Gibson has specified a multi-pronged approach, while bemoaning the fact that two of the main problems were the limited number of magistrates and High Court judges available and a backlog of unheard and undetermined civil cases that had existed since 1990.
With alternative dispute resolution (ADR) training being planned for June under his leadership, one hopes this will be a step towards a solution even if not a panacea, since some cases can only be appropriately solved by litigation.
But there are countries that have seen success via ADR, including Australia whose Dispute Settlement Centre showed that the state of Victoria had a settlement rate of 84 per cent.Although I’ve heard of instances where parties may decide to litigate even after ADR is attempted, my only concern would be the issue of precedence in such cases.
If for instance, Barbados clears up a large set of contentious civil cases via ADR, when similar cases come up later and parties have all the time in the world to deal with them, will the ADR precedent be forced upon those involved in such cases or will the parties simply be allowed to return to litigation?
Furthermore, since ADR will certainly impact on the ability of some attorneys to capitalize on potentially lucrative but drawn-out cases, one wonders how the Chief Justice will deal with the expected resistance within his legal fraternity.
It is an uphill battle from any vantage point but it’s one that threatens the very survival of the country, which is still largely dependent upon tourism, in the midst of rising crime and other legal and economic challenges; so a resolution has to be implemented post-haste.
In the matter of business facilitation, I was introduced last weekend to the World Bank’s Doing Business annual survey, which has ranked Barbados at 88 out of 185 countries for 2013.According to the survey, which has Singapore at No. 1 and St Lucia as the highest ranking Caribbean country at No. 53, the criteria feature the ease of starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency.
St Lucia, Antigua, Dominica, Trinidad and Tobago, St Vincent, and The Bahamas are all ahead of Barbados, which should be a matter of deep concern not only for our political leaders but our public sector, which is going through the painful process of reform, and our private sector, which in my view is still living somewhere in the 20th century when protectionism and preferential treatment were buzzwords.
Within the Doing Business criteria, Barbados’ rating is not all doom and gloom since, as an export-based economy, it is favourably ranked in trading across borders. However, it makes sad reading to see that it takes 18 days to start a business here, 416 days to deal with construction permits, and 1 340 days to enforce contracts in 2013.
This has to be a big deal, particularly if Barbados wants the international business sector to remain a vital part of its economy.
It is therefore essential for the country, in the context of the global economic crisis, to remove many of its disincentives to enterprise, reduce administrative barriers and improve efficiency as much as possible without having to spend a fortune.
And hopefully some future Government can establish a business facilitation unit, as was suggested in the Opposition’s manifesto earlier this year, since backlogs and administrative barriers simply make us look inefficient.
• Ricky Jordan is an Associate Editor of THE NATION. Email: rickyjordan@nationnews.com.