Dear Editor,

Ever since “Dudusgate”, I have been having a problem with Bruce Golding remaining as prime minister, but I must say I am with him in his most recent suggestion that Jamaica opts for its own final court of appeal to replace the Privy Council, rather than going ahead with the Caribbean Court of Appeal.

You see, as far as any form of Caribbean unity is concerned, I have long ago agreed with the results of the federation in 1961 when Jamaicans voted to go it alone rather than federating with the other islands of the former British West Indies. Therefore, I have always resented the attempts to reverse that decision via the back door. You see, I am aware that most people in the other islands just do not like us and each time our government does something with them, it usually proves to be nothing but a very costly “suck-up” to the other islands.

An example of some costly “suck-ups” are Caricom and the fiasco of Cricket World Cup in 2007. As to Caricom, every other nation in the group seems to have benefited from it except us. But that’s understandable, for do you see the type of resistance they put up whenever we try to get our products into their territories? Remember the patty issue recently? Trinidad fought tooth and nail to try to keep out our patties, even implying that they were being manufactured under insanitary conditions. Yet our supermarkets and stores are overflowing with Trinidadian goods.

Anyway, back to this Caribbean Court of Justice (which was just another case of putting the interests of the other islands above ours, for although our courts are sadly lacking funds to keep them going, we refused to attend to those pressing problems while going ahead to borrow funds to set up that white elephant. In fact, we put up US$33 million of the US$100 million cost of the court, but they did not even appoint one Jamaican to the court while appointing two Guyanese. And if you think they have superior intellectuals to us, look at some of whom they rejected – former head of the law faculty based in Barbados, a Jamaican who has been training lawyers in all the territories, and also our former president of the Court of Appeal.

I hope we will be having a referendum on the matter soon. We need to be vigilant, however, and see that the judges to be appointed to the final court of appeal are protected from any form of political interference or pressure, and this should be entrenched in the constitution.

Joan Williams

Kingston

gratestj@gmail.com