Judges Show Their Political Stripes/​deceptive Veneer Gone For Good.…

The actions of a large num­ber of the Jamaican judi­cia­ry [unelect­ed by any­one] two days ago demon­strate that they believe they are above over­sight and that they should oper­ate by fiat.
That mind­set places them above the laws and above the over­sight of the Jamaican peo­ple who pay their salaries.
The Prime Minister is well with­in his right to ensure that who­ev­er he choos­es (as autho­rized by the con­sti­tu­tion) is the best per­son for the job.
Judges are not kings and as such, the per­son who has the respon­si­bil­i­ty to select a chief jus­tice has every right to ensure that the per­son cho­sen is qual­i­fied to do the job effectively.

The very same enti­ties and indi­vid­u­als who insist that the Jamaican Judiciary must be above polit­i­cal over­sight of any sort, do not believe that anoth­er Government enti­ty the Jamaica Constabulary Force should enjoy the same freedoms.
In fact, they clam­or for mul­ti­ple lay­ers of over­sight for the Police so much so that the police has six (6) offi­cial over­sight bod­ies and a litany of oth­er Agencies which pur­port to be rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the inter­est of those whose rights have been violated.
“But then, bash­ing the police has become Jamaica’s biggest growth indus­try, for which there is a ready-made audi­ence”. — Mark Ricketts, econ­o­mist, author and lecturer.

What is the rea­son for the bipo­lar posi­tion on two sep­a­rate arms of gov­ern­ment tasked with the very same out­come, just with dif­fer­ent functions?
To get the answer to that ques­tion one has to under­stand the his­to­ry of our coun­try, the way Jamaicans see those who wield pow­er and how they view them­selves in that equation.
That must also be viewed in the con­text of how the JCF came into exis­tence, the strained rela­tion­ship the agency has had with the pop­u­la­tion over the decades, and final­ly who staff the department.

In many ways, Jamaica has been unable to shake off some of the most destruc­tive ves­tiges of her colo­nial past. Deeply embed­ded in those ves­tiges is the omnipresent caste sys­tem which stub­born­ly exists to this day. Jamaican cops are prod­ucts of the poor­er caste of the Island. Jamaican Lawyers not so much. In essence, based on the trap­pings of being in the upper caste, even those who some­how claw their way out of abject pover­ty and make it through law school would rather pre­tend that their past nev­er exist­ed. Such is the way those who have acquired some degree of edu­ca­tion see them­selves and that is the way the pop­u­la­tion views them.

It’s incred­i­ble that any­one could prof­fer the notion that the Prime Minister does not have the author­i­ty to install some­one on a tem­po­rary basis while he does due dili­gence to ensure that the per­son final­ly cho­sen is the best fit for the job.
The mere fact that Justice Sykes was installed sug­gests that the PM had duly informed him­self of jus­tice Syke’s bona fides and want­ed to make sure as he should, hav­ing been tasked with choos­ing the right per­son under the constitution.
The idea that what the Prime Minister did is tan­ta­mount to Political inter­fer­ence is ridicu­lous when it is his duty to select a can­di­date, the best can­di­date to fill the post.

Judges are not elect­ed by the peo­ple, it is the peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives who appoint them, there­fore it must be the right of the peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives to ensure best prac­tices are adhered to as the PM intend­ed (PM par­ty neutral).
Judges can­not be allowed to con­tin­ue allow­ing crim­i­nals back onto the streets as soon as they are arrest­ed, and stop­ping cas­es from pro­ceed­ing with­out being answer­able to any­one.

Last year alone, 1616 peo­ple were report­ed mur­dered, some esti­mates indi­cate those may have been mod­est numbers.
Several of those homi­cides could have been avoid­ed if judges across the Island had done their jobs with­out sup­plant­i­ng the laws with their own per­son­al bias­es and opinions.
In hun­dreds of cas­es police ver­i­fi­ably demon­strat­ed that these monarchs,[sic] sum­mar­i­ly and sur­rep­ti­tious­ly grant­ed bail to mur­der sus­pects in a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of instances. This they do in cas­es where sus­pects are allowed out to kill over and over and over with­out fac­ing a sin­gle jury to answer for their crimes.

In oth­er instances, vio­lent offend­ers who com­mit egre­gious felonies using firearms are giv­en sus­pend­ed sen­tences, some are admon­ished and dis­charged. On the occa­sions in which they both­er to arrive at a cus­to­di­al sen­tence the time giv­en in rela­tion to the crimes com­mit­ted leaves observers aghast at the obvi­ous sense­less­ness of the sen­tences hand­ed down.
Their behav­ior has severe­ly cor­rupt­ed the process and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly destroyed the con­fi­dence of the pub­lic in the abil­i­ty of the sys­tem to dis­pense jus­tice in a fair and equi­table way.
The end result is a dra­mat­ic increase in vio­lent crimes and a seri­ous uptick in assaults on the per­sons of our law enforce­ment officers.

In our par­lia­men­tary demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem as in a repub­li­can democ­ra­cy, it is the peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives who appoint judges, they must be account­able to the peo­ple. This is only pos­si­ble when those tasked with select­ing Judges use best prac­tices and apply due dili­gence when choos­ing mem­bers to fill vacan­cies on the bench.
The clos­ing down of the courts by activist judges two days ago final­ly peeled back the thin veneer which gave the impres­sion that they were any­thing but polit­i­cal prac­ti­tion­ers oper­at­ing as inde­pen­dent tri­ers of fact.