De­spite a re­cent call by for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for Trinidad and To­ba­go to “com­plete its in­de­pen­dence” by sev­er­ing ties with the Unit­ed King­dom’s Privy Coun­cil, there re­mains strong op­po­si­tion on the ground to such a move.

This has been re­vealed in the re­sults of a new pub­lic opin­ion poll car­ried out just over a week ago in both Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Asked whether T&T should abol­ish ap­peals to the Privy Coun­cil, most re­spon­dents in Trinidad (45 per cent) said “No,” com­pared to 25 per cent who said “Yes” to end­ing the cur­rent re­la­tion­ship with the Lon­don law lords.

The re­main­ing 30 per cent of 1,650 par­tic­i­pants in the Hamid Ghany sur­vey, com­mis­sioned by Guardian Me­dia, were un­de­cid­ed.

Over in To­ba­go, where 530 peo­ple were polled, pub­lic sen­ti­ment was quite sim­i­lar. Forty-five per cent of those sur­veyed said they were in favour of main­tain­ing ties with the Privy Coun­cil, while 21 per cent were op­posed.

The oth­er 34 per cent were non-com­mit­tal.

The April 10-13 sur­vey comes less than a month af­ter Row­ley’s im­pas­sioned ap­peal to the coun­try to end ties with the Privy Coun­cil and to adopt the Port-of-Spain-based Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) as its fi­nal court of ap­peal.

Row­ley, whose Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Gov­ern­ment has been in the fore­front of ef­forts to re­move ju­rispru­den­tial colo­nial ves­tiges, made the call im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Britain im­posed visa re­stric­tions on Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als.

But with the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) seem­ing­ly dead set against mak­ing the CCJ this coun­try’s fi­nal court of ap­peal and re­plac­ing the Privy Coun­cil, Row­ley could do noth­ing else but open­ly vent his frus­tra­tions on the mat­ter, which re­quires two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty sup­port in the Par­lia­ment for adop­tion.

“It is un­just, it is dis­grace­ful that they (Britain) would dis­re­gard our wider na­tion­al in­ter­est, put a fee on us and tell us while you have to come to us to have our law lords tell you what is right and wrong, you have to pay for a visa to come and do that,” Row­ley said.

De­liv­er­ing his fi­nal ad­dress as prime min­is­ter to PNM sup­port­ers on March 16 at a po­lit­i­cal ral­ly at Wood­ford Square, Port-of-Spain, he went as far as to warn the coun­try to “get the hell out” of the Privy Coun­cil.

“If you think they [the British) have come around to treat­ing us like equals, you have an­oth­er thought com­ing. Many of them still be­lieve that we are sub­stan­dard; (that) we are in­fe­ri­or, and they should treat us how they want to treat us …

“Trinidad and To­ba­go must com­plete its in­de­pen­dence and get the hell out of the Privy Coun­cil,” he stressed.

“(But) what re­al­ly rots my gut is that I have to al­so swal­low that the high­est court of this land is in Lon­don at the Privy Coun­cil and if you have to go to the Privy Coun­cil, you have to go there by way of some arrange­ments they make for you. Do you re­al­ly feel in­de­pen­dent where your high­est court is in a for­eign coun­try and the for­eign coun­try lead­ers would put down the arrange­ments by which you could come to that coun­try?”

The poll was con­duct­ed in the mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies of Barataria/San Juan, Ch­agua­nas East, Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la, La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro, Ma­yaro, Moru­ga/Table­land, Pointe-a-Pierre (now called Clax­ton Bay), San Fer­nan­do West, St Joseph, To­co/San­gre Grande and Tu­na­puna, as well as To­ba­go.

It has a mar­gin of er­ror of +/- 2.5 per cent for Trinidad and +/- 4.0 per cent based on re­cent po­lit­i­cal and bound­ary shifts.