PRESIDENT Dr. Irfaan Ali and other top government officials, last Thursday, welcomed President of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), Justice Adrian Saunders, to Guyana for a three-day visit, during which he would attend activities of the Guyana Bar Association’s 2022 Law Week.

The visit would have allowed Justice Saunders opportunities to assure Guyana’s legal fraternity of the CCJ’s independence and the professionalism that guides its judgements.

It would also have allowed President Saunders, if asked, to explain to legal and political doubters that all its Guyana decisions, before and after the last general and regional elections, as well as rulings reversing or changing local court judgements, were done on the basis of law.

Even before the last Guyana elections, there was a high level of cynicism and criticism following certain judgements that didn’t go down well with politicians who simply always put party first and foremost, above all else.

Ordinary Guyanese whose jail sentences might have been reduced or imprisonment otherwise shortened, will have every reason to pray for the CCJ for the rest of their lives.

But not the politicians who felt ‘robbed’ by CCJ’s decisions in the case of the PPP/C’s appeal to the regional court to make a legal judgement of the way the last general and regional elections was conducted.

Few can forget the lengths and depths some politicians went to, including trying to politically align Justice Saunders to those opposed to the then ruling APNU+AFC.

President Saunders commendably ignored the political diatribe boomed his way and the CCJ did its job of receiving and hearing the Appeals related to the allegations of electoral fraud.

Counting of the votes featured the traditional suspense associated with historical efforts to alter election results and change outcomes, including the appalling treatment of the Chair of the Elections Commission – a retired high court judge – and refusal of the then outgoing government’s top elections officials to accept the electorate’s verdict.

The clear losers held on to lost power for several weeks, until the outgoing President and Leader of the APNU (also a retired army brigadier) David Granger decided to command his political troops to withdraw from a battle they were sure to lose.

Not all the troops acquiesced to the brigadier’s retreat order, some even accused him of betrayal while still firing political blank shots at the CCJ and its President.

But the CCJ’s decisions and judgements were more than just an overwhelming decree of the judgement of the people in Guyana’s court of public opinion, as everyone was arrived at on the basis of law – and nothing else.

Justice Saunders’ meetings with Guyana’s lawyers, judges, magistrates and court officials will have allowed him, if asked, to erase any delayed doubts in the minds of those still nursing election-loss headaches or heartburns.

The Law Week’s activities will also have allowed President Saunders to address the public – directly or indirectly – and assure them the CCJ isn’t there only to judge on political and judicial matters brought before it, but that its jurisdiction also extends to include hearing of private and commercial matters brought before it by entities or individuals on any matter they may feel needs its consideration and ruling.

The CCJ President would also have been able to let all Guyanese know that each and every citizen has equal access to the CCJ, which actually sits in CARICOM member-states to hear local cases – also through online hearings – and dispatches cases faster than the London law lords.

And all of that without any Caribbean citizen having to win a lotto (or two) to afford the cost of seeking justice from the British Privy Council, which remains the Final Appellate Court of the other ten member-states that haven’t joined Barbados, Belize, Dominica and Guyana to make the CCJ their final Court of Appeal.

That the majority of governments that agreed to establish the CCJ to interpret and rule on the basis of the Treaty of Chaguaramas (that established CARICOM) have not taken the next logical step of joining its Appellate Jurisdiction will not surprise anyone who’s followed Caribbean politics since the age of independence.

In cases where a referendum is necessary to accede to the CCJ’s Appellate Jurisdiction, governments have refrained from taking that constitutional step for fear of inability to win the two-thirds (66%) majority required, as experienced by Antigua & Barbuda a few years ago.

Saint Lucia is well under way to be the fifth CARICOM nation to accede to the CCJ’s Appellate Jurisdiction, despite signs and sounds that the political opposition will activate its legal minds to challenge the decision before the same Privy Council that only delivers judgement to those CARICOM citizens who can afford the unbearable costs.

Justice Saunders and his predecessors will most likely have visited every member-state of the CCJ since its inception in 2001, to make its case in the court of Caribbean public opinion — and on every occasion it’s proven that it meets and decides on cases faster and much cheaper than the Privy Council decides on Caribbean cases.

In 2014, the Jamaica Bar loudly complained to then CCJ President Sir Denis Byron that it was getting “too little from the London law lords” as the Privy Council had only delivered 11 judgements in 28 months.

Indeed, in the CCJ’s 16 years, Saint Lucia has only had 17 cases heard by the Privy Council, amounting to a single case per year, while the island pays an annual membership fee of US $2.1 million.

So, what’s the use of CARICOM member-states paying that kind of money annually, but not making use of the appellate services available from the CCJ?

By-the-way: Can anyone in any CARICOM member-state remember any member of the British Privy Council visiting to explain how it works and why it costs so much to seek justice in London?

I rest my case.