PM: No immediate move to adopt CCJ as T&T’s final court of appeal

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has ruled out any im­me­di­ate move for Trinidad and To­ba­go to adopt the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) as its fi­nal court of ap­peal, even as she wel­comed the re­gion­al court’s im­pend­ing role in re­solv­ing the dis­pute over the reap­point­ment of Cari­com Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar was yes­ter­day asked di­rect­ly by Guardian Me­dia whether T&T would now con­sid­er em­brac­ing the CCJ as its fi­nal ap­pel­late court af­ter suc­cess­ful­ly ad­vo­cat­ing for the tri­bunal to de­ter­mine the dis­pute sur­round­ing Dr Bar­nett’s reap­point­ment.

“Not at this time,” the Prime Min­is­ter re­spond­ed.

“There must be fur­ther dis­cus­sions about amend­ments to the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas as well as the CCJ doc­u­ments.”

Her re­sponse came just days af­ter Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment agreed to re­fer the chal­lenge sur­round­ing the process used to reap­point Dr Bar­nett to the CCJ for an ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion, a pro­pos­al ad­vanced by T&T fol­low­ing con­cerns raised by Per­sad-Bisses­sar over whether the cor­rect pro­ce­dures had been fol­lowed.

The de­ci­sion was an­nounced on Mon­day by Cari­com chair­man and St Lu­cia Prime Min­is­ter Philip Pierre, who said Heads of Gov­ern­ment had agreed to in­voke Ar­ti­cle 212 of the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas to ob­tain the court’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the treaty pro­vi­sions gov­ern­ing the ap­point­ment process.

Pierre al­so con­firmed that ex­ist­ing arrange­ments would re­main in place un­til the CCJ de­liv­ers its ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion.

Mean­while, speak­ing at the clos­ing me­dia con­fer­ence of the 51st Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment in St Lu­cia yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar wel­comed the agree­ment, say­ing it demon­strat­ed the re­gion’s com­mit­ment to re­solv­ing dif­fer­ences through es­tab­lished le­gal mech­a­nisms while strength­en­ing re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion.

She re­it­er­at­ed that de­spite her con­cerns over the ap­point­ment process, T&T’s com­mit­ment to Cari­com has nev­er wa­vered.

“My po­si­tion from the start re­mains to now,” she said.

“Whilst I would have lev­elled some con­cerns about the op­er­a­tions of Cari­com, I have al­ways said Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mains com­mit­ted to Cari­com. We have un­wa­ver­ing sup­port for Cari­com, for us to work to­geth­er to bet­ter the re­gion and, of course, all our cit­i­zens.”

The Prime Min­is­ter said dis­cus­sions dur­ing the sum­mit had helped re­solve many of the is­sues she had raised.

“Some mat­ters dis­cussed in the re­cent days, I think we’ve been able, through the chair­man­ship and, of course, with the co­op­er­a­tion of the oth­er Heads, to be able to iron out some of the con­cerns I had. So my po­si­tion has not changed. I re­main com­mit­ted to Cari­com.”

She likened the re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion move­ment to a fam­i­ly, say­ing dis­agree­ments should not be ig­nored but ad­dressed open­ly.

“We will have is­sues from day to day, from time to time. In a fam­i­ly, you have is­sues. We have is­sues of con­cern, and my po­si­tion is that we must raise them. We must not put our heads down in the sand like os­trich­es. We raise them when they are there and try to find res­o­lu­tions.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who re­turned home last night, said the Cari­com meet­ing had suc­ceed­ed in re­solv­ing many of those dif­fer­ences.

Dr Bar­nett was among the re­gion­al lead­ers at­tend­ing yes­ter­day’s clos­ing me­dia con­fer­ence.

Re­gion­al health­care ac­cess; aid for Venezuela

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so pledged to ex­pand T&T’s con­tri­bu­tion to re­gion­al health­care by mak­ing spe­cialised med­ical ser­vices more ac­ces­si­ble and af­ford­able to Cari­com cit­i­zens.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that T&T will make its Na­tion­al Pros­thet­ics Cen­tre avail­able to res­i­dents across the re­gion, fol­low­ing as­sis­tance from the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia in es­tab­lish­ing the fa­cil­i­ty.

“We have had help from the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia to set up a Na­tion­al Pros­thet­ics Cen­tre for the fit­ting of ar­ti­fi­cial limbs,” she said.

“I am now say­ing that, for an af­ford­able price, it will be avail­able to our Cari­com broth­ers and sis­ters be­cause, when we look at the prices oth­er­wise, you go to the US, they range from US$3,000 to US$120,000 de­pend­ing on the mo­bil­i­ty of what you want that ar­ti­fi­cial limb to do.”

She said the ini­tia­tive would sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce costs for Caribbean cit­i­zens while gen­er­at­ing for­eign ex­change earn­ings for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“This is one area we can bring down costs. We can use our cen­tre; of course we will earn some forex, but it will be at an af­ford­able price for our broth­ers and sis­ters in Cari­com.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so said Trinidad and To­ba­go stands ready to help ad­dress short­ages of med­ical pro­fes­sion­als across the re­gion by mak­ing its pool of lo­cal­ly trained doc­tors avail­able to fel­low mem­ber states.

In ad­di­tion, the Prime Min­is­ter of­fered the use of the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal to Cari­com coun­tries, de­scrib­ing it as a state-of-the-art fa­cil­i­ty now ful­ly op­er­a­tional af­ter years of in­ac­tiv­i­ty.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so con­firmed that a ship­ment of hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid was ex­pect­ed to de­part T&T for Venezuela af­ter the coun­try was rocked by twin earth­quakes that has since claimed over 3,500 lives. Re­ports have in­di­cat­ed that thou­sands more re­main un­ac­count­ed for with wide­spread in­fra­struc­tur­al dam­age im­ped­ing res­cue ef­forts.

“What­ev­er hap­pens in Venezuela hap­pens in Trinidad and To­ba­go, just last night, we had a lengthy dis­cus­sion, at 2 am some of us Heads were dis­cussing this very mat­ter with Venezuela, giv­en the dev­as­ta­tion that it faces. First of all, im­me­di­ate­ly when those things hap­pened, many of us in the re­gion were hold­ing meet­ings while it was hap­pen­ing and send­ing per­son­nel, so in­stant­ly we ad­dressed the hu­man woes of the earth­quakes. There­after, we worked in the re­gion for send­ing re­lief sup­plies and re­lief per­son­nel leave tonight (Wednes­day), when I go home we will be send­ing off an en­tire fer­ry, the Galleons Pas­sage, go­ing off to Venezuela loaded with sup­plies for the peo­ple of Venezuela.”