ST JOHN’S, Antigua (CMC) — Former prime minister Sir Lester Bird says replacing the London-based Privy Council with the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) “finishes Antiguan and Barbudan independence and autonomy that was begun in the 1930s”.

In a broadcast here Sir Lester, who served as the island’s second prime minister from 1994-2004, said that the ruling Antigua Labour Party (ALP) had long advocated the need for the country to move away from the Privy Council.

He said when the island sought to attain political independence from Britain in the 1960s, it wanted full independence that would have also included an independent judicial system.

“We rejected the idea that judicial decisions which affect our lives should be made in a city thousands of miles away, and by persons appointed largely by the prime minister of a country that was our former colonial power,” Sir Lester said.

“Replacing the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council with the Caribbean Court of Justice finishes the circle of Antiguan and Barbudan independence and autonomy that was begun in the 1930s. And, it is not as if we are settling for something less. In fact we have created something more,” said Sir Lester, who said he was the first regional leader to have signed the agreement establishing the CCJ in Barbados on February 14, 2001.

“The Caribbean Court of Justice represents all that is admirable and respected from our Caribbean civilisation. It is the culmination of the work of every generation of Antiguans and Barbudans for one hundred years. As a people we owe it to our own self-worth and our own dignity to support the replacement of the Privy Council by the CCJ when a referendum is held,” Sir Lester said.

Antigua and Barbuda last Thursday launched a three-month public education programme on whether to continue with the Privy Council or replace it with the Trinidad-based regional court. At the end of the exercise, citizens will be asked to vote in a referendum on the matter.

In his broadcast, Sir Lester, 78, who is now a national hero and senior minister in the present Gaston Browne administration, said he welcomed the initiative since “it is important for the people of this country to know that serious consideration of our delinking from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council did not start this week”.

Sir Lester, who said as prime minister he signed the Caribbean Community (Caricom) loan agreement with the Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) to establish the US$100 million Trust Fund to finance the court, said also since no member of the CCJ is beholden to governments for their salaries and other emoluments, “none of them has to worry that a decision against a government would affect their livelihood.

“That is important for the upholding of the rights and freedom of every single person in Antigua and Barbuda and all other Caricom countries,” he said, adding that from 1992 when the West India Committee Report was published, “the Labour Party fully embraced its recommendation that the Caribbean should have its own final Appellate Court, made up of highly respected Jurists from our own region.”

Sir Lester said that throughout the 1990s, as the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, he worked diligently with his colleague Heads of Government in the Caribbean to make the CCJ a reality.

“We made progress one step at a time, because we recognised that change — however necessarily obvious — would be resisted, particularly by those who bestow some superior capability in a court in Europe.”

But he said that the idea that the CCJ should replace the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council always “remained alive in the minds of the progressive leadership of the Caribbean”.

“It was certainly so in the Labour Party of this country; a labour party that had fought for the rights and freedoms of the people of this nation in the 1930s and 40s; a labour party that had given the people of this nation political rights in the 1950s 60s, and that ended colonialism and led our country to independence in the 1980s,” he added.