Richard Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says re­plac­ing the Privy Coun­cil with the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice as this coun­try's fi­nal court of ap­peal was not a pri­or­i­ty for her Gov­ern­ment.She made the state­ment in an in­ter­view with the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice ear­li­er this week.Per­sad-Bisses­sar who is the out­go­ing chair of the Com­mon­wealth was in Lon­don last week for cel­e­bra­tions or­gan­ised by the 54-mem­ber na­tion group­ing.She said her ten-month Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment had many more crit­i­cal mat­ters to ad­dress be­fore con­sid­er­a­tion could be giv­en to mak­ing the CCJ T&T's fi­nal court of ap­peal.Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "Yes, there is a place and time for the CCJ, but it is not an area of pri­or­i­ty for my gov­ern­ment at this point in time."

She list­ed crime, so­cial pro­grammes and in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment as ar­eas of ma­jor con­cern for her gov­ern­ment at this time."I don't see that we are suf­fer­ing as a re­sult of hav­ing the Privy Coun­cil," she added.A few months ago, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said T&T would re­place the Privy Coun­cil with the CCJ on­ly if the pop­u­la­tion vot­ed in favour of the move in a ref­er­en­dum. For­mer for­eign af­fairs min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon called on the Gov­ern­ment to "bring on" the CCJ ref­er­en­dum.But Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­sist­ed: "The whole ar­gu­ment about the CCJ is not about jus­tice."The ar­gu­ment is if you want to be a sov­er­eign na­tion, you want to be in­de­pen­dent, you know the world is not like that any­more," she said."This world is a glob­al vil­lage, so what's wrong if judg­ments are be­ing made by the Privy Coun­cil."