Trinidad judiciary plagued by chaos – Seepersad

By Frank Seepersad

(Trinidad Guardian) One year ago, I broke with tra­di­tion and spoke di­rect­ly to the me­dia about my views in re­la­tion to the open­ing of the 2018/2019 Law term.

One year lat­er, and hav­ing been con­tact­ed to ex­press my views, con­front­ed with the cur­rent cir­cum­stances which can­not be con­doned, I feel com­pelled and con­strained to clear­ly ar­tic­u­late my con­cerns.

This in­sti­tu­tion which is en­trust­ed with the sa­cred oblig­a­tion to be the guardian of the Con­sti­tu­tion and the law, con­tin­ues to be plagued and char­ac­terised by chaos and now stands dan­ger­ous­ly close to the brink of com­plete col­lapse.

Com­plaints in re­la­tion to the Ju­di­cia­ry and its ad­min­is­tra­tion have been made by var­i­ous sec­tors.

The As­sem­bly of South­ern Lawyers has com­plained that many south­ern courts are not func­tion­ing ad­e­quate­ly and there is no fun­ction­al re­place­ment for the old San Fer­nan­do Court which now par­tial­ly shares space with the High Court.

Cit­i­zens with mat­ters at the Princess Town Mag­is­trate’s Court have to dai­ly un­der­take the ar­du­ous jour­ney to Rio Claro.

Fam­i­ly lawyers have com­plained that south­ern Trinidad is still with­out a Fam­i­ly Court and the May­or of San Fer­nan­do has pub­licly aired con­cerns that the for­mer San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trates’ Court is now a sor­did site and the struc­ture pos­es pub­lic health chal­lenges.

Al­though laud­able trans­for­ma­tion­al mea­sures have been un­der­tak­en in re­la­tion to Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Re­form, these ef­forts have not been ac­com­pa­nied by the req­ui­site re­sources, in­fra­struc­ture , stake­hold­er en­gage­ment or in­for­ma­tion.

As re­port­ed in the press many Ju­di­cia­ry em­ploy­ees cur­rent­ly op­er­ate un­der a state of un­cer­tain­ty as their job se­cu­ri­ty is un­der threat and the im­age of dis­traught val­ued Ju­di­cia­ry team mem­bers protest­ing on the steps of the Hall of Jus­tice can­not go un­ac­knowl­edged.

Judges of the Court of Ap­peal have made di­rect and poignant state­ments in two mat­ters in­volv­ing, the Chief Jus­tice and yet in de­fi­ance of log­ic, con­ven­tion and pro­pri­ety, the Chief Jus­tice con­tin­ues at the helm of this im­plod­ing in­sti­tu­tion seem­ing­ly em­bold­ened and un­ac­count­able .

The lengths to which the Chief Jus­tice has gone to evade cross ex­am­i­na­tion in a mat­ter in­volv­ing a for­mer Judge demon­strates that the of­fice hold­er is of the view that the rules don’t ap­ply to him. Al­though every wit­ness is rou­tine­ly sub­ject­ed to cross ex­am­i­na­tion so as to test their cred­i­bil­i­ty, the Chief Jus­tice ob­vi­ous­ly felt that he is above due process.

The pub­lic at large ap­pears to be dis­il­lu­sioned and if one ac­cepts the re­cent Nigel Hen­ry poll , this in­sti­tu­tion is con­front­ed with an un­prece­dent­ed cri­sis as on­ly 12 per­cent of the per­sons polled in­di­cat­ed that they had con­fi­dence in the Ju­di­cia­ry. This sta­tis­tic is so shock­ing­ly low, that, even if one fac­tors in mar­gins of er­ror and oth­er polling de­fi­cien­cies, the head of every sin­gle ju­di­cial of­fi­cer should be bent in shame.

Every ef­fort has to be made to rem­e­dy this en­su­ing mess. It sim­ply can­not be busi­ness as usu­al. Un­der the stew­ard­ship of this Chief Jus­tice this in­sti­tu­tion now holds the un­en­vi­able acco­lade and dis­tinc­tion of be­ing the pub­lic in­sti­tu­tion in which the pub­lic has the least con­fi­dence.

In the face of the un­ac­cept­able and un­fath­omable state of af­fairs, the on­ly vi­able re­course is to seek divine in­ter­ven­tion.

Con­se­quent­ly, un­like last year, I shall at­tend this year’s open­ing. En­gulfed by a shame, my fo­cus at Mon­day’s cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing shall be di­rect­ed up­on prayer­ful pe­ti­tions to catal­yse change.

A prayer will be raised that all of us who have tak­en an oath to serve the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go shall re­commit to the dis­charge of our re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in a man­ner which is de­void of bias, dis­mis­sive of in­su­lar and/or ir­rel­e­vant con­cerns and for all our de­ci­sions whether ju­di­cial or ad­min­is­tra­tive to be char­ac­terised by fair­ness, em­pa­thy, equa­nim­i­ty and eq­ui­ty .

God will be asked to re­mind every ju­di­cial of­fi­cer that we must be bold and in­de­pen­dent as in­sti­tu­tion­al loy­al­ty and the dis­charge of our con­sti­tu­tion­al oblig­a­tion de­mands that we must do all with­in our re­mit to char­ter a new course.