Proponents of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) can never be certain of the main strands of the debate of those who oppose the court.
Their central theme seems to be in a permanent state of shift, like a meandering snake on a leisurely crawl through a difficult maze.
Not long ago they were fundamentally against the court, with a claim that "we are not ready". On the face of it, that is a simple, inoffensive comment. But make a closer examination and it is a loaded comment about sense of self, and, some would claim, a contemptuous declaration about the capacities of the people of these parts.
For, essentially this position is not substantially different than what was held by some of the 19th century personalities during the arguments about the future of these colonies. The people are not ready, so they ought to be apprenticed while being helped along by the guiding hand and benevolence of those with superior wisdom.
Today, the parallel position is either that a Caribbean bench is incapable of the quality of jurisprudence that emanates from the other side of the Atlantic, or that politicians are seeking to establish a hanging court in order to circumvent recent rulings by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
Dr Kenny Anthony, the Prime Minister of Saint Lucia, recently demolished these doubting, self-flagellating, defeatist posturing in a lecture at the Norman Manley Law School at the Mona Campus at the University of the West Indies. Dr Anthony left no doubt about the quality and integrity of Caribbean jurists.
He also made a fundamental point that having the Privy Council as the region's court of last resort has not prevented the Caribbean from developing an over-crowded and run-down court system and judicial infrastructure. Those, as well as any moral abhorrence to capital punishment, were issues to be attacked separately, not as a case against the CCJ.
Regional governments have dealt fully, in our view, with the issue of the appointment of judges to the CCJ, divesting themselves, almost totally, of superior authority in this regard. They have also proposed a novel, and workable arrangement, for the financing of the CCJ.
So now the argument is not so much about the general financing of the court, but demands for a specific line item budget for the CCJ well before it is launched. That was yesterday.
Today it is about entrenching the court and grabbing at the various straws to prove how critical this is to the provenance of the court. In the absence of the court!
Indeed, in democratic societies, the political discourse will often be variegated and at times people will adopt opportunistic and cynical positions. But this does not obviate the process. And neither do glib meanderings.(Barbados Advocate)