THE OPPOSITION BARBADOS LABOUR PARTY (BLP) will not support Government in any attempt to change existing legislation to facilitate the appointment of a new Chief Justice, says former Prime Minister Owen Arthur.
Speaking at a by-election campaign meeting at Gall Hill, St John in support of BLP candidate Hudson Griffith last Sunday night, Arthur told the crowd of about 300 that he had already written back to Government indicating the proposed appointee Marston Gibson did not conform with the requirements stipulated in Barbados’ laws for the appointment of a Chief Justice.
Gibson was originally expected to take up the post from January 1, 2011.
Arthur said the Opposition had been “approached by the Attorney General [Adriel Brathwaite]” and asked to agree to a change in the law to clear the way for Gibson’s appointment.
Section 7 of the Supreme Court of Judicature Act stipulates that a Chief Justice must be practising law for no fewer than 15 years in the Commonwealth or serving for the same period as a parliamentary counsel, or as a professor or teacher of law at the University of the West Indies or at a school for legal education approved by the Judicial and Legal Services Commission.
Gibson, a Rhodes Scholar, has been resident and practising law in the United States for several years and does not meet any of the requirements.
Arthur lambasted Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, who was Attorney General at the time the decision was made, and said Stuart “doesn’t have a lot of work to do” but would have still been expected to read the law and sensibly advise late Prime Minister David Thompson on the conditions that would obtain for someone to qualify as Barbados’ Chief Justice.
He described Stuart’s recommendations to Thompson as “botched” and added Government was now trying to change a fundamental law of Barbados for one man. (WG)
