At­tor­ney Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, is call­ing for a ref­er­en­dum on if the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) should re­place the Privy Coun­cil.

“If the Privy Coun­cil has to be re­moved as the fi­nal court of ap­peal for T&T, I think the first set of per­sons or the first step that has to be tak­en is for the peo­ple to con­sent for that to hap­pen. The most im­por­tant stake­hold­er in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice is the peo­ple. If any Gov­ern­ment wants to abol­ish ap­peals to the Privy Coun­cil, they must go to the peo­ple, hold a ref­er­en­dum and the peo­ple will vote on that is­sue,” he said.

On Sat­ur­day, Ma­haraj spoke at a sem­i­nar host­ed by the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) at the Lak­sh­mi Girls' Hin­du Col­lege in St Au­gus­tine on the pros and cons of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) re­plac­ing the Privy Coun­cil as the fi­nal court of ap­peal for T&T.

He re­count­ed that when he be­came At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, he was in­volved in the plans to es­tab­lish the CCJ and called it an “im­por­tant in­sti­tu­tion”.

He be­lieves that in the fu­ture, the Privy Coun­cil will “ul­ti­mate­ly be re­moved.”

“I think that some­times in the fu­ture in the his­to­ry of T&T it may be ten years, 15 years, 20 years the Privy Coun­cil will ul­ti­mate­ly be re­moved as the fi­nal Court of Ap­peal.”

He al­so said he does not think that re­mov­ing the Privy Coun­cil was on top of the present Gov­ern­ment's agen­da.

“The Gov­ern­ment at the present time does not have the req­ui­site ma­jor­i­ty in the Par­lia­ment to re­move the ju­di­cial com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil.”

He point­ed out that there have been eight at­tempts, us­ing ref­er­en­dums by dif­fer­ent re­gion­al coun­tries, to abol­ish the Privy Coun­cil as a court of ap­peal and all failed ex­cept for Guyana.

Dur­ing the ques­tion and an­swer seg­ment, when asked about what ways the pop­u­la­tion should hold the Gov­ern­ment and se­nior mem­bers of the ju­di­cial sys­tem ac­count­able, Ma­haraj said he would pre­fer not to com­ment on the is­sues sur­round­ing the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, as the mat­ter is be­fore the Law As­so­ci­a­tion.

The Coun­cil of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion has ini­ti­at­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to pos­si­ble breach­es of the code of ethics gov­ern­ing lawyers against the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al af­ter he was dis­qual­i­fied as T&T rep­re­sen­ta­tive in a law­suit filed against for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung aris­ing out of the Pi­ar­co Air­port de­vel­op­ment project al­most 20 years ago.

In a re­cent af­fi­davit, Ar­mour said he was sim­ply a ju­nior coun­sel to Kuei Tung, but this week mod­i­fied that state­ment say­ing that was not so.

Ma­haraj was al­so asked about the Chief Jus­tice and pre­vi­ous al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct, to which he replied the pop­u­la­tion must be in­formed about the facts to make in­formed de­ci­sions.

He said stake­hold­ers such as the me­dia, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion and oth­ers must put “pres­sure” on pol­i­cy­mak­ers to take ac­tion.

A for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter and law lec­tur­er Karen Nunez-Tesheira, who al­so spoke at the sem­i­nar, gave the opin­ion that it is time the coun­try starts to think about leav­ing the Privy Coun­cil as it is a for­eign in­sti­tu­tion that does not un­der­stand the cul­tur­al in­tri­ca­cies of T&T, and al­so the costs to go to the Privy Coun­cil is out of the reach of the ma­jor­i­ty of T&T pop­u­la­tion.

“I am one of those who be­lieves that the time has come to take that leap of faith  and to make the CCJ our fi­nal court off ap­peal.”

At­tor­ney Kiel Tak­lals­ingh gave his po­si­tion that T&T should keep the Privy Coun­cil as the fi­nal court of ap­peal be­cause it is well re­spect­ed glob­al­ly.