UWI Prof welcomes Caricom decision but says clarification needed

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Pro­fes­sor Ra­jen­dra Ram­lo­gan has wel­comed Cari­com's ap­proval of T&T's move to seek a Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) opin­ion on the reap­point­ment of Cari­com's Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al - and he's queried if an ex­pe­dit­ed hear­ing will be done.

And for­mer For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne says he's pleased that some in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment are now see­ing val­ue in the CCJ.

Just be­fore Cari­com's St Lu­cia con­fer­ence, Ram­lo­gan re­vealed a le­gal opin­ion that the reap­point­ment was con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly flawed and cit­ed rea­sons.

In May, when Cari­com lead­ers had agreed that the reap­point­ment would stand and there would be no re­vis­it­ing of the process, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said then that T&T would not go to the CCJ on it or recog­nise the CCJ as T&T's fi­nal ap­pel­late court.

Af­ter Browne urged Per­sad-Bisses­sar not to try to re­vive the mat­ter at the St Lu­cia con­fer­ence, how­ev­er, Ram­lo­gan called for the is­sue to be de­cid­ed up­on by the CCJ.

Fol­low­ing yes­ter­day's Cari­com agree­ment on T&T's CCJ pro­pos­al, Ram­lo­gan, cit­ing his le­gal as­sess­ment, said he re­gard­ed Cari­com's ac­tion as a wel­come de­vel­op­ment for the rule of law with­in Cari­com.

"Re­sort­ing to the CCJ un­der Ar­ti­cle 212 of the Re­vised Treaty is pre­cise­ly the type of in­sti­tu­tion­al mech­a­nism that ex­ists to re­solve dis­putes con­cern­ing the in­ter­pre­ta­tion and ap­pli­ca­tion of the treaty. It demon­strates that le­gal dis­agree­ments with­in the Com­mu­ni­ty can and should be re­solved by law rather than po­lit­i­cal de­bate," Ram­lo­gan said.

He cit­ed sev­er­al im­por­tant le­gal and prac­ti­cal ques­tions that will hope­ful­ly be ad­dressed.

"The state­ment in­di­cates the sta­tus quo con­cern­ing the reap­point­ment will re­main pend­ing the ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion. If that is so, what is the le­gal po­si­tion when the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al's present term ex­pires on Au­gust 14th, 2026? Does the pur­port­ed reap­point­ment au­to­mat­i­cal­ly take ef­fect on that date, or is some in­ter­im arrange­ment con­tem­plat­ed?"

He added, "Equal­ly im­por­tant, no timetable has been an­nounced for re­fer­ring the mat­ter to the court. Will the Com­mu­ni­ty seek an ex­pe­dit­ed hear­ing giv­en the ap­proach­ing ex­piry of the cur­rent term?" Ram­lo­gan said since the Com­mu­ni­ty it­self will now be the ap­pli­cant in the ad­vi­so­ry pro­ceed­ings, the ques­tion nat­u­ral­ly aris­es as to how any ac­tu­al or per­ceived con­flicts of in­ter­est will be man­aged. "The state­ment is silent on re­cusal or al­ter­na­tive in­sti­tu­tion­al arrange­ments dur­ing the pro­ceed­ings," he added. He said these re­main­ing pro­ce­dur­al is­sues are ca­pa­ble of res­o­lu­tion.

"One would ex­pect fur­ther de­tails to clar­i­fy how the re­fer­ral will pro­ceed and how the Com­mu­ni­ty will man­age the pe­ri­od be­fore the court de­liv­ers its ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion."

Mean­while, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed, who in April had backed the PM's po­si­tion, said, "I main­tain that my­self, Sir Ronald Sanders, Dr Bhoe Tewarie and an ab­solute­ly sol­id le­gal opin­ion from Pro­fes­sor Ram­lo­gan could not all have been in­de­pen­dent­ly wrong on this dis­pute. "The pri­ma­ry is­sue has al­ways been a mat­ter of process. The Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas is in essence our Cari­com con­sti­tu­tion. In every ju­ris­dic­tion, it's the con­sti­tu­tion which di­rects ac­tions and process­es. How, there­fore, could Cari­com of­fi­cers be­lieve they could have de­vi­at­ed from such di­rec­tions on the ba­sis of per­ceived favour, fa­mil­iar­i­ty or even friend­ship?"

Mo­hammed added, "The mat­ter was al­ways one of two things: that lead­ers re­scind­ed the de­ci­sion and start­ed over, or we re­vert­ed to the CCJ on the mat­ter. Pro­fes­sor Ram­lo­gan, in his le­gal wis­dom, made it pel­lu­cid­ly clear that such was in­deed the route to go. I look for­ward to an ur­gent but com­pre­hen­sive ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion from the CCJ bench on this is­sue. I agree with the Prime Min­is­ter that the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al and the gen­er­al coun­cil ought to re­cuse them­selves from de­ci­sion-mak­ing un­til this mat­ter is ful­ly re­solved."

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath, who didn't ex­pect a long wait on the CCJ's ex­am­i­na­tion mat­ter since it wasn't a case, added, "The Prime Min­is­ter has had le­gal ad­vice and Cari­com is now un­der pres­sure on whether or not its ini­tial rec­om­men­da­tion and ac­tions were deemed to be in keep­ing with the Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas.

"For­mer For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Browne said, "I'm pleased that there are some in the T&T Gov­ern­ment who now are see­ing some val­ue in the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice."

Browne seemed to be ref­er­enc­ing the UNC's views against the CCJ while in Op­po­si­tion and al­so Per­sad-Bisses­sar's po­si­tion up to May against the CCJ on the mat­ter of Bar­nett's reap­point­ment.

Browne said, "We have not­ed that the sta­tus quo re­mains with re­spect to the re­new­al of the term of of­fice for the Cari­com Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al. And now the mat­ter shifts to the re­gion­al court and away from the very pub­lic ex­changes that were ini­ti­at­ed by PM Kam­la and her Gov­ern­ment."