The issue that has stalled the constitutional reform process, making the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) Jamaica’s final appellate court, will be a priority of the People’s National Party (PNP) if it is returned to office after the upcoming general election.

PNP President Mark Golding spoke to the issue Thursday night at a St Ann parish meeting at Musgrave Square in Brown’s Town, where the party’s four candidates for the parish were presented to a massive crowd.

It was Golding who in January, pulled the party’s representatives out of the Joint Select Committee of the Parliament examining the Constitution (Amendment) Republic Bill, ostensibly because the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) has refused to make the CCJ Jamaica’s final court at the same time the country ditches the British Monarchy in favour of a republic-style government.

The Opposition Leader told the crowd that the PNP is determined to repatriate Jamaica’s final court by cutting ties with the UK-based Privy Council which has been the country’s final court since independence.

Arguing that the Privy Council is inaccessible to most Jamaicans, Golding declared that “Nobody in this audience can take a case to the Privy Council, it is not a real court for Jamaica because you have to be a multi-millionaire to take a case there and you have to have a UK visa as well, which you don’t necessarily must get”.

The PNP President noted that the CCJ was established 20 years ago, it is fully funded by a trust fund which Jamaica contributes to, and is “well protected from political interference, having its own regional judicial commission for appointment of judges which no politician in any island can interfere with”.

“Time come for full sovereignty, let us use the CCJ, the countries in the Caribbean that are doing well – Guyana, Barbados, St Lucia, Dominica, Belize – are all using it. Their people have benefitted from access to justice and we hope the Jamaica Labour Party can remove the veil from their eyes,” said Golding.

He said it was ironic that it is former JLP Prime Minister Hugh Shearer who first floated the idea of a regional final court in the early 1970s. “And yet now dem a gi it a fight, it nuh mek nuh sense people. We want full sovereignty, we want full independence, we want decolonisation and we want it now. That is what we stand for in the People’s National Party”.