The Jamaica Observer editorial board, based on suggestions made on Tuesday, November 29, 2016, continues an adopted push against the idea of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) being the final court of appeal for Jamaica and the other former colonies of Britain here in the Caribbean.

As the editorial quite rightly reminds, however, this has not always been so. For, from very early until quite recently, the newspaper, with sound reasoning and with strength of conviction unmatched by almost all other entities, trumpeted the virtues of Jamaica acceding to the CCJ in both its original and its appellate jurisdictions.

The question now arises: What really has caused this drastic about-turn in your stance? The single wide-of-the-mark reason that you have sought to proffer is the reversal by the Privy Council of a ruling of “the court in St Kitts” concerning constituency boundary changes proposed by the then Government of St Kitts and Nevis prior to the holding of that territory’s last general election.

According to your reasoning, without providing any evidence whatsoever, the ruling of “the court in St Kitts” must have been politically motivated, as you say, “influenced by political considerations”.

And so, pray, separate and apart from the unfortunate insinuations regarding the lack of principle on the part of “the court in St Kitts”, what on Earth has that episode got to do with the “proponents” of the integrity of the CCJ and why Jamaica should shun the proposal for us to subscribe to that regional appellate tribunal, as you now suggest?

And why do you presume that the CCJ would not have arrived at the very same conclusion as that reached by the Privy Council?

In this long-running conversation — now for over a century — concerning the proposal to de-link from the UK-based Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, there has, sadly, been the constant underlying suggestion that the integrity of our Caribbean judges is somehow inferior to, and certainly cannot match, that of those who sit on the Bench in the UK.

It is a view that led a former Jamaican prime minister, no less, to claim publicly that we should remain with the Privy Council since that is a court from which “pure justice” flows.

The truth is that all courts sometimes fall into error. In that vein, as far as the Privy Council itself is concerned, the legal representatives of the late Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, would have something quite interesting to report concerning how the case that was brought against him in the UK was later found to have been flaw-filled when it was adjudicated by that court.

If truth be told, however, I rather suspect that this undercurrent of lack of integrity on the part of our judges here in the Caribbean does not, in fact, form part of the thinking of your editorial board. I’m also persuaded that you are very much alive to the illogic of the reasoning that you have sought to put forward concerning the St Kitts matter.

Therefore, I submit that there has to be another reason the newspaper has changed its stance from the position to which it had been firmly wedded for several years. And I hold to the view that the real reason will somehow ultimately come to the fore.

One final point! The one and only lesson to be gleaned from the recent Grenada referendum is that which has long to be found in the wisdom of the ages: A referendum is nothing more or nothing less than a political campaign exercise.

So, with respect, let me stridently point out once again: Of the more than 40 former British colonies across the globe that have de-linked from the jurisdiction of the Privy Council over these 80 years or so — from Canada in the 1930s to Dominica a few months ago — not a single one has done so by the route of a referendum. Why? Within the Westminster system of government it has long been acknowledged that matters relating to the country’s judicial system should never be exposed to the political hustings.

The framers of the constitutions of Grenada and Antigua and Barbuda therefore have some explaining to do as to why such a requirement came to find a place in their independence constitutions. And isn’t it simply amazing that there are some with superior wisdom here in Jamaica, including your good selves, of late, who would wish for us to go where all before us have feared to tread, even in the face of the absence of any such requirement in our constitutional arrangements?

Arnold J Nicholson is a former attorney general and minister of foreign affairs and foreign trade in People’s National Party administrations. Send comments to the Observer tonicholsonaj1@gmail.com.