Caribbean Court of Justice judges accuse court president of interference in leaked emails
Justices Peter Jamadar and Chile Eboe-Osuji accused CCJ President Winston Anderson of trying to influence verdicts, as the court reaffirmed its commitment to judicial independence.
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago. A row has broken out at the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) after several judges accused the court’s president, Winston Anderson, of becoming increasingly authoritarian and trying to influence final verdicts.
The concerns surfaced after a string of internal email threads was leaked to the Trinidad Express newspaper, which published them on Sunday, prompting a wave of reaction across the region.
The allegations
Trinidadian Justice Peter Jamadar and Nigerian Justice Chile Eboe-Osuji were forthright in setting out their concerns.
Eboe-Osuji said that in the extradition case involving the Mohameds of Guyana, Anderson had “tried single-handedly to override judicial independence and long-standing CCJ conventions that guided how decisions are rendered when judges disagree”.
Jamadar said he had experienced “an attempt to influence the opinions of colleagues that differed from yours in an authoritative manner”, adding that this was “far beyond anything that I have ever experienced in all my years as a judicial officer”.
He also pointed to “emerging or creeping patterns of anti-democratic approaches to us as judges of the court”.
Court responds
The court issued a statement that did not directly address the allegations, saying the issues had been presented without context or an appreciation of the nature of deliberations.
It said the judges remained committed to the UN Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct, including “independence, impartiality, integrity, propriety, equality, competence, and diligence”.
Wider implications
The revelations could have implications for countries reluctant to sign on to the court. Only Guyana, Barbados, Belize, Dominica and St Lucia use the CCJ as their final appeal court; the other Caricom members rely on the British Privy Council.
The row comes a week after Jamaica’s opposition renewed calls for talks on becoming a republic, a process stalled partly because the government does not want to join the CCJ.
Anderson previously served as an attorney for the Caricom secretariat. The New York-based Caribbean Guyana Institute for Democracy has separately accused him of working with the Guyana government to force out the head of Guyana’s judiciary. He has not commented on those allegations.
