Prime Minister Freundel Stuart says Barbados’ judicial system has been “unnecessarily slandered” by the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).
The island’s final appellate court, which is based in Trinidad, has on three occasions bashed the Barbados courts for the time they take to hear and conclude cases, at one point saying that the long delays were deplorable.
Yesterday, for the first time, Stuart publicly addressed the matter in the House of Assembly, charging that such judicial delays were not peculiar to Barbados but were an issue throughout the Caribbean. However, he said while this was the case, the Privy Council, which was the appellate court for all the other Caribbean jurisdictions, handled the issue of delays in a more diplomatic fashion.
He reminded that only four CARICOM countries – Barbados, Guyana, Belize and Dominica – had signed onto the CCJ’s appellate jurisdiction, while all the others continued to go to UK’s Privy Council.
The Prime Minister said while he was speaking on the matter for the first time in Parliament, he had made his concerns known elsewhere.
