Lakhan urges caution over CCJ allegations

South­ern Lawyers' As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Saira Lakhan is urg­ing cau­tion fol­low­ing re­ports of in­ter­nal strife over the lead­er­ship at the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ).

Lakhan said while the al­le­ga­tions were se­ri­ous and should not be dis­missed, con­clu­sions should not be reached about any in­di­vid­ual judge based sole­ly on al­le­ga­tions and cor­re­spon­dence in the pub­lic do­main.

Her com­ments come af­ter a me­dia re­port of in­ter­nal emails among CCJ judges, in which al­le­ga­tions were raised con­cern­ing the lead­er­ship of CCJ Pres­i­dent Jus­tice Win­ston An­der­son. The re­ports in­clud­ed claims of “dic­ta­to­r­i­al” lead­er­ship, pan­el fix­ing and at­tempts to in­flu­ence court de­ci­sions.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Lakhan said the CCJ’s own ju­di­cial con­duct frame­work places in­de­pen­dence, in­tegri­ty, im­par­tial­i­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty at the cen­tre of ju­di­cial of­fice.

“Any con­cerns raised with­in the court should there­fore be ad­dressed through the ap­pro­pri­ate in­sti­tu­tion­al process­es, fair­ly and trans­par­ent­ly, in ac­cor­dance with the stan­dards gov­ern­ing ju­di­cial con­duct and with­out pre­judg­ing the al­le­ga­tions,” Lakhan said.

How­ev­er, Lakhan said the fo­cus should re­main on pro­tect­ing the in­sti­tu­tion and the pub­lic’s con­fi­dence in the re­gion­al court.

“The CCJ is big­ger than any in­di­vid­ual of­fice-hold­er,” she said.

“The over­rid­ing con­cern must be pre­serv­ing the in­de­pen­dence and in­tegri­ty of the court and pub­lic con­fi­dence in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice across the Caribbean.”

The CCJ, head­quar­tered here in Trinidad, is the high­est court for sev­er­al Cari­com mem­ber states and serves both an orig­i­nal ju­ris­dic­tion, deal­ing with dis­putes in­volv­ing the in­ter­pre­ta­tion and ap­pli­ca­tion of the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas, and an ap­pel­late ju­ris­dic­tion for coun­tries that have re­placed ap­peals to the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil with the CCJ.

The al­le­ga­tions re­port­ed in re­cent days have raised ques­tions about the court’s in­ter­nal gov­er­nance and ju­di­cial con­duct, but Lakhan’s stressed the im­por­tance of al­low­ing es­tab­lished pro­ce­dures to ad­dress such con­cerns.

Her in­ter­ven­tion comes amid wider dis­cus­sions about the im­por­tance of ju­di­cial in­de­pen­dence and ac­count­abil­i­ty with­in Caribbean in­sti­tu­tions.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the se­ri­ous­ness of the al­le­ga­tions, Lakhan called for con­cerns to be dealt with through the ap­pro­pri­ate mech­a­nisms, rather than con­clu­sions drawn from ma­te­r­i­al cir­cu­lat­ing pub­licly.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for com­ment on the is­sue but re­ceived no re­sponse up to press time.