Trinidad CJ criticises ‘uninformed’ media reporting as Law term opens

(Trinidad Guardian) Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie has opened the new law term with a scold­ing for the me­dia for what he con­tends is the ab­di­ca­tion of its du­ty to act re­spon­si­bly.

Flanked by judges as he sat in the Con­vo­ca­tion Hall at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, Archie crit­i­cised the me­dia for de­pend­ing on “hard­ly re­li­able” and “un­in­formed” sources in its re­port­ing.

Since 2017, Archie has been un­der in­tense me­dia scruti­ny for al­leged­ly try­ing to sway judges to change their of­fi­cial se­cu­ri­ty provider from a com­pa­ny hired by the State to a ser­vice provider in the pri­vate sec­tor.

The firm he al­leged­ly sug­gest­ed was the em­ploy­er of his friend, Dil­lian John­son, who had a fraud con­vic­tion record.

There were al­so claims that he used his ju­di­cial rank to try to ob­tain State hous­ing for cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als.

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the claims and sub­mit­ted a re­port to the Prime Min­is­ter call­ing for him to trig­ger Sec­tion 137 of the Con­sti­tu­tion and ap­point a tri­bunal to ex­plore pos­si­ble im­peach­ment of the Chief Jus­tice.

The Prime Min­is­ter has said his le­gal ad­vice showed in­ad­e­quate sub­stan­ti­a­tion for that re­quest, and the Law As­so­ci­a­tion is con­tem­plat­ing tak­ing the mat­ter to court.

Speak­ing about im­prove­ments in judges’ pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­els, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter the last round of re­cruit­ment to the High Court bench, Archie told judges and lawyers that this nar­ra­tive is ig­nored in part by “the aban­don­ment of the fourth es­tate of its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ed­u­cate and in­form, or even to act re­spon­si­bly at times.”

“At the risk of crit­i­cism, of be­ing ac­cused of ar­ro­gance, I have to say I am too busy do­ing the peo­ple’s work,” he said as he dis­missed “un­in­formed” re­port­ing.

“Please don’t waste any of our time,” he chid­ed the me­dia in re­sponse to re­quests for the ju­di­cia­ry to re­spond to some­thing that is in­ac­cu­rate or “im­per­ti­nent.”

He al­so re­spond­ed to the re­sis­tance mount­ed by Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in to her ap­point­ment to the Fam­i­ly Court in To­ba­go.

Gob­in has been out­spo­ken in her crit­i­cism of Archie as the con­tro­ver­sial al­le­ga­tions were made pub­lic over the last two years. In cor­re­spon­dence she sent to Archie af­ter learn­ing of her re­as­sign­ment to To­ba­go, Gob­in ques­tioned whether the move was pun­ish­ment for be­ing vo­cal.

“I have been dis­mayed at the per­cep­tion in some quar­ters that the as­sign­ment of judges to the Fam­i­ly Court im­plies a de­mo­tion or loss of se­nior­i­ty,” Archie said this af­ter­noon.

He said the Chief Jus­tice has the dis­cre­tion to as­sign judges any­where, and he said that the law makes it manda­to­ry for judges as­signed to the Fam­i­ly Court to have the ex­pe­ri­ence, tem­pera­ment and qual­i­ties that suit the po­si­tion.

“On­ly a spe­cial type of judge goes there,” Archie said.

Archie’s ad­dress to mark the open­ing of the law term was the twelfth of his ca­reer at the helm of the ju­di­cia­ry. That makes him the longest-serv­ing chief jus­tice in the post-In­de­pen­dence era.

“That fact alone presents chal­lenges for some peo­ple,” he said, “but we all have to suck it up and do the job we are as­signed to do.”