Will this Democratic Labour Party (DLP) Administration ever be able to do anything right? That’s the plaintive question being asked all around Barbados these days as financially-wracked people observe in disbelief the latest act of bungling by the Government, this time over a matter as straightforward as the appointment of a Chief Justice.
Over most of its first three years in office, Barbadians would have grown accustomed to the Dems repeatedly stumbling from one act of confusion and incompetence to the other, the most recent instance being the November 2007 Budget characterised by numerous examples of policy confusion, explanation and clarification. Some people would have for some time tended to be forgiving of the DLP, given its glaring shortness of ministerial experience and talent.
But few, if any, would have expected the Government to have made such a horribly embarrassing mess in seeking to appoint a new Chief Justice, something that past administrations have routinely done and without even a hint of the controversy that has unnecessarily erupted over the current exercise, thereby plunging one of Barbados’ traditionally most respected top posts into an offensive national verbal tug of war between the DLP and the Barbados Labour Party (BLP).
As a result, the national judicial system is being forced by the DLP to undergo the kind of negative public attention it had not attracted since the severe and harsh tongue-lashing it took in 1974 from then Prime Minister Errol Barrow, from the very floor of the House of Assembly itself, in the exceedingly contentious Constitution Amendment Debate of the time. And those with short and convenient memories have sought to accuse the BLP of indulging in “gutter politics” in the recent St John by-election.
Running true to form, the Dems had sought to cover up its own miserable and colossal act of incompetence by accusing the BLP of indulging in political tit for tat by opposing this Government’s announced move to appoint Marston Gibson as Chief Justice, because the DLP under the late David Thompson had not supported the move by then Prime Minister Owen Arthur to make (Sir) David Simmons Chief Justice after serving as attorney general.
Both Opposition Leader Owen Arthur and his deputy Dale Marshall have been making it publicly clear that the BLP’s refusal to support Gibson’s appointment was not an act of narrow political retaliation, but was simply based on the fact that Gibson did not meet all of the criteria laid down in law to qualify for the post, a situation that the DLP was vowing to change by going to Parliament to amend the Barbados Supreme Court Judicature Act.
The BLP’s position, voiced by Arthur and Marshall, is that the DLP would be setting a dangerous and whimsical precedent to change legislation to accommodate any individual or circumstance, and for that reason the Opposition would not support Gibson’s appointment or related legislation amendment. The BLP’s stance has been vindicated
by the independent Bar Association, whose president Leslie Haynes, QC, stressed that any attempt to amend the law to accommodate the appointment of any individual was wrong and an erosion of the rule of law.
We wait to see whether the DLP is capable of responding to principle and logic or if it will stubbornly persist in bringing the position of Chief Justice into possibly long-term, undesirable and corrosive disrepute.
• BLP Column represents the views of the Barbados Labour Party.
