?Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day says the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) should be an in­ter­me­di­ate court and not the fi­nal court of ap­peal for the peo­ple of T&T. Pan­day said so yes­ter­day in a tele­phone in­ter­view en route from Tan­za­nia, Africa, where he along with Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Don­na Cox and Deputy House Speak­er Pen­ne­lope Beck­les at­tend­ed the 55th Com­mon­wealth Par­lia­men­tary Con­fer­ence from Sep­tem­ber 26 to Oc­to­ber 6. Pan­day was asked to out­line his po­si­tion on the is­sue in the wake of two re­cent de­vel­op­ments. The first was an an­nounce­ment by Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter Bruce Gold­ing that he was now pre­pared to re­think the CCJ. The Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion (CMC) quot­ed Gold­ing as say­ing his JLP Gov­ern­ment had reser­va­tions about the way in which the court (CCJ) had been es­tab­lished.

"We fought a vig­or­ous bat­tle. I am glad that we did, changes were made, heads of Gov­ern­ment were not the per­sons who ap­point the court (judges), that is done by a re­gion­al ju­di­cial ser­vices com­mis­sion, there is a trust fund that has been es­tab­lished to en­sure the court will be fund­ed in per­pe­tu­ity, some im­prove­ments have been done." And the sec­ond de­vel­op­ment was an an­nounce­ment pub­lished in the Fi­nan­cial Times last month, which quot­ed Pres­i­dent of the British Supreme Court, Lord Nicholas Phillips as say­ing that the Law Lords spend "a huge amount of time" hear­ing mat­ters from the Caribbean and oth­er Com­mon­wealth states. He said he "per­son­al­ly would like to see it re­duced. He added that "in an ide­al world" those coun­tries would es­tab­lish their own fi­nal courts of ap­peal and dis­con­tin­ue us­ing the Privy Coun­cil.

But Pan­day said the CCJ "lacks the re­quired con­fi­dence. We have no con­fi­dence in the CCJ and as a con­se­quence it should be used as an in­ter­me­di­ate court and not as the fi­nal court of ap­peal for T&T for the time be­ing." Pan­day said the fact that "so many cas­es from T&T are be­ing sent to the Privy Coun­cil in Lon­don should con­firm the need for the Privy Coun­cil to re­main the coun­try's high­est court of ap­peal. On­ly Bar­ba­dos and Guyana have ac­cept­ed the CCJ as the fi­nal court of ap­peal. The CCJ is based in T&T. The Patrick Man­ning-led T&T Gov­ern­ment has been crit­i­cal of the UNC Op­po­si­tion for fail­ing to ho­n­our a com­mit­ment to have the CCJ re­place the Privy Coun­cil as this coun­try's high­est court of ap­peal.