CCJ president dismisses concerns over his leadership

Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor–News­gath­er­ing

ke­[email protected]

​Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) pres­i­dent Jus­tice Win­ston Charles An­der­son has re­ject­ed al­le­ga­tions that he act­ed im­prop­er­ly in man­ag­ing the re­gion­al court, in­clud­ing claims of pan­el fix­ing and at­tempts to in­flu­ence judges’ de­ci­sions.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, An­der­son de­fend­ed his ac­tions fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of pri­vate cor­re­spon­dence be­tween CCJ judges which re­vealed se­ri­ous con­cerns about his lead­er­ship.

In his state­ment, An­der­son said the dis­clo­sure of con­fi­den­tial court com­mu­ni­ca­tions was “whol­ly un­ac­cept­able” and un­der­mined con­fi­dence in ju­di­cial de­lib­er­a­tions and col­le­gial­i­ty.

He de­fend­ed his de­ci­sion to re­move a judge from an in­ter­locu­to­ry pan­el in the D’Al­ma­da v Trinidad and To­ba­go case, say­ing the de­ci­sion was based sole­ly on the judge’s re­fusal to fol­low what An­der­son de­scribed as the CCJ’s es­tab­lished prac­tice on ju­di­cial at­tire.

An­der­son re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that the pan­el was changed to in­flu­ence the out­come of the case.

“The al­le­ga­tion is whol­ly un­true,” he said.

He said pan­el com­po­si­tion has al­ways been part of the pres­i­dent’s ad­min­is­tra­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and has nev­er been used to in­flu­ence the out­come of pro­ceed­ings.

An­der­son said that, go­ing for­ward, every CCJ judge would be re­quired to sit on every pan­el un­less the judge opts out for a le­git­i­mate rea­son and is ex­cused.

He al­so re­ject­ed al­le­ga­tions that he at­tempt­ed to in­flu­ence the prepa­ra­tion of judg­ments, in­clud­ing in a case in­volv­ing Guyanese busi­ness­men Nazar and Azrud­din Mo­hamed.

An­der­son said dis­agree­ments among judges dur­ing de­lib­er­a­tions were nor­mal and there was “COM­PLETE UNA­NIM­I­TY” among the sev­en judges on the out­come of that ap­peal.

On the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing his in­volve­ment in Guyana’s ju­di­cial ap­point­ments, An­der­son ac­knowl­edged that he could have han­dled the mat­ter dif­fer­ent­ly.

He said he had sought to en­cour­age agree­ment be­tween Guyana’s Pres­i­dent and Op­po­si­tion Leader on the sub­stan­tive ap­point­ments to the of­fices of Chan­cel­lor and Chief Jus­tice.

“Look­ing back, I recog­nise that an­oth­er course would have been much bet­ter,” he said.

An­der­son said he could have con­fined him­self to pub­lic com­men­tary on the con­sti­tu­tion­al im­por­tance of the ap­point­ments, as his pre­de­ces­sors had done.

An­der­son al­so did not sig­nal any in­ten­tion to re­sign. In his state­ment, he said the court would con­tin­ue hear­ing cas­es and ful­fill­ing its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to the Caribbean re­gion.

Mean­while, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go yes­ter­day said it wel­comed the de­ci­sion by the Re­gion­al Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ters raised in the judges’ pri­vate cor­re­spon­dence.

LATT said the re­ports sug­gest­ed a near-unan­i­mous po­si­tion among the CCJ judges against what they per­ceived as en­croach­ment on their ju­di­cial in­de­pen­dence.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion should reaf­firm the prin­ci­ple of ju­di­cial in­de­pen­dence and es­tab­lish clear guide­lines for the pres­i­dent’s ad­min­is­tra­tive pow­ers.

It said An­der­son, while hold­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive au­thor­i­ty as head of the CCJ, is “first among equals” and that any guide­lines must en­sure prop­er re­gard for the views and con­cerns of the oth­er judges, par­tic­u­lar­ly where ju­di­cial func­tions and the rep­u­ta­tion of the court are in­volved.

As­sem­bly of South­ern Lawyers pres­i­dent Saira Lakhan has al­so called for an in­de­pen­dent and trans­par­ent re­view of the sit­u­a­tion, say­ing the sub­stance of the con­cerns must be ex­am­ined.

“The CCJ is sim­ply too im­por­tant, to T&T, the re­gion and the wider project of Caribbean ju­rispru­dence for us to treat this episode as some­thing to be man­aged un­til the head­lines dis­ap­pear. If there are deep­er prob­lems, they must be iden­ti­fied and ad­dressed now. Oth­er­wise, they’ll sur­face again,” Lakhan said in a state­ment.

“The great­est ser­vice we can ren­der the CCJ now is, there­fore, not to shield it from dif­fi­cult ques­tions, but to in­sist those ques­tions are prop­er­ly, in­de­pen­dent­ly and trans­par­ent­ly an­swered.”

Not­ing the joint state­ment on the mat­ter is­sued by the Heads of Ju­di­cia­ry of sev­er­al Caribbean ju­ris­dic­tions, Lakhan said while she un­der­stood the con­cerns ex­pressed about the dis­clo­sure of con­fi­den­tial in­ter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion, stake­hold­ers were al­low­ing the is­sue of the leak to dis­tract from the re­al is­sue.

“The leak isn’t the re­al is­sue. For me, this is ul­ti­mate­ly about some­thing much larg­er: it’s about the soul of the court. What­ev­er one’s view of the man­ner in which these mat­ters came in­to the pub­lic do­main, se­ri­ous con­cerns have now re­port­ed­ly been ex­pressed from with­in the court it­self about its ad­min­is­tra­tion and mat­ters said to af­fect ju­di­cial in­de­pen­dence and de­ci­sion-mak­ing.”

Lakhan added, “Those al­le­ga­tions haven’t been es­tab­lished. Fair­ness re­quires that they not be treat­ed as es­tab­lished. The CCJ’s pres­i­dent, like every­one whose con­duct is ques­tioned, is en­ti­tled to fair­ness and due process ... (But) the con­cerns re­port­ed­ly ex­pressed by judges of the court must al­so be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly.”