Dear Editor,

I WRITE in respectful concurrence with Justice Duke Pollard’s crystalline analysis of the issues bearing on the question of the presidential term limit.
The matter is constitutionally important and seemingly will reach the Caribbean Court of Justice for final determination.
Of outstanding importance, to my mind, is Justice Pollard’s reference to, and use of, Dr Bennion’s classic ‘Statutory Interpretation’ as a clarifying agent.  [See also ‘Craies on Statute Law’ (5th edn.)]
Principally, it is the jurisprudence deriving from Bennion, particularly the bearing of associated words on statutory terms, that led Justice Pollard to the conclusion that articles 1 and 9 of the Constitution refer to “a unified political entity” and not to “constitutional entitlements of the people” as wrongly conceived by Chief Justice Chang and the divergent majority in the Court of Appeal.
I support Justice Pollard’s closely reasoned contention. What eventuates beyond all question is that articles 1 and 9 (the alteration of which requires referenda in keeping with article 164) have not been touched by the impugned amending provision (Act 17 of 2000) which prescribed the two-term presidential limit.
If Justice Pollard and I are correct, then questio cadit – the matter of a referendum is irrelevant.
Regards,
Keith Massiah S.C.
Former Attorney-General and
Chancellor of the Judiciary