Court of Ap­peal Judge Mark Mo­hammed is en­cour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to not be afraid to speak out when they wit­ness mis­con­duct. 

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at a grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny for stu­dents of UWI-Roytec last Fri­day, Jus­tice Mo­hammed warned against blind and my­opic loy­al­ty to friends or in­di­vid­u­als en­gaged in wrong­do­ing. 

Jus­tice Mo­hammed said: "True loy­al­ty in­volves do­ing what is right even when it is deeply un­com­fort­able, more so in a so­ci­ety where the very few who chose to speak out are sub­ject to an avalanche of pro­pa­gan­da." 

"How­ev­er, against the risk of all of that, by hold­ing each oth­er ac­count­able, a cul­ture of in­tegri­ty is fos­tered in a holis­tic man­ner," he added. 

Jus­tice Mo­hammed re­ferred di­rect­ly to the Whistle­blow­er Pro­tec­tion Act, which was passed by Par­lia­ment last year. 

The leg­is­la­tion seeks to com­bat cor­rup­tion by pro­tect­ing peo­ple who re­port such ac­tiv­i­ty. 

"This leg­is­la­tion, grad­u­ates, has the po­ten­tial to dra­mat­i­cal­ly al­ter the land­scape of cor­po­rate cul­tures and of pub­lic gov­er­nance," he said. 

He not­ed that it would help aug­ment the vi­tal role the me­dia plays as the watch­dog of democ­ra­cy. 

"It is about shin­ing the light in­to an of­ten im­pen­e­tra­ble dark­ness and "hold­ing truth to pow­er"," he said. 

Ad­vis­ing the grad­u­ates on how to dis­cern and nav­i­gate eth­i­cal dilem­mas, Jus­tice Mo­hammed sug­gest­ed striv­ing to evolve their sense of moral­i­ty. 

"It is quite al­right if learn­ing to be­have in an eth­i­cal man­ner is al­ways a work in progress," he said. 

He al­so sug­gest­ed build­ing a cir­cle of friends who do not shy away from giv­ing con­struc­tive crit­i­cism and en­cour­aged in­tro­spec­tion and pub­lic ser­vice.

"As you nav­i­gate what­ev­er eth­i­cal dilem­mas will in­evitably come in­to your paths, re­mem­ber the right choice is sel­dom the eas­i­est choice," he said. 

Jus­tice Mo­hammed al­so sought to ad­dress the ef­fect of crim­i­nal­i­ty on the coun­try. 

"The cy­cle of dis­re­spect, abuse, and vi­o­lence has be­come a per­ma­nent fix­ture, per­pet­u­at­ing a suf­fo­cat­ing cli­mate of near-con­stant fear and of di­vi­sion," he said. 

High­light­ing a very per­son­al and not well-pub­li­cised ex­pe­ri­ence, Jus­tice Mo­hammed, who is cur­rent­ly the most se­nior judge pre­sid­ing over crim­i­nal ap­peals, not­ed that his fa­ther was mur­dered in a rob­bery when he was 18 years old. 

Jus­tice Mo­hammed, who served as Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) be­fore join­ing the bench, stat­ed that while his fa­ther's two at­tack­ers were ar­rest­ed, tried and con­vict­ed, they were freed on ap­peal due to a ma­jor le­gal er­ror by their tri­al judge. 

"My ca­reer track, which he could not have seen, saw me tra­vers­ing the paths of be­ing a pros­e­cu­tor, an oc­ca­sion­al er­ror mak­ing tri­al judge, and now an er­ror cor­rect­ing Ap­pel­late Judge," he said.

"The irony is nev­er lost on me," he added. 

The theme of the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny was Do­ing Right All The Time.