KINGSTON, Jamaica, CMC – The Court of Appeal, after five days of arguments, on Friday, reserved judgment in the matter on the constitutionality of the Act that extended the retirement age of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP)and Auditor General.
The appeal centers on the validity of the 2023 Act, which amended sections 96 (1) and 121 (1) of the Jamaican Constitution, allowing the incumbent DPP to extend her term of office beyond the retirement age.
The Court will hand down its ruling early in the next court term, which begins September 23.
The issue of gender was raised for the first time in the Court of Appeal hearing on Friday.
King’s Counsel Douglas Leys, who is representing Paula Llewellyn—who walked away from the position of DPP earlier this year in the wake of the controversy—told the judges that if they interpreted the Act as not applying to Llewellyn, they would be on a collision course with the constitutional prohibition against gender discrimination.
He said any decision that excluded Llewellyn—the first woman to be appointed DPP—from the ambit of the Act would exclude her as a female.
In April, the full Court — ruled that while the amendment to the Act increasing the retirement age of the DPP from 60 to 65 is constitutional, the new provision introduced into the constitution via a second amendment, giving the DPP the right to elect to remain in office, is “not a valid section and is severed from the constitution because the process remains unchanged for extending the retirement age.
However, Leys referred to a paragraph in the Supreme Court ruling that said the opposition parliamentarians who challenged the Act were asking either for the entire Act to be struck out or for the section raising the retirement ages of the DPP and Auditor General from 60 to 65 to be interpreted as not applying to Llewellyn, and for the section allowing her to retire at any time after 60 to be struck out.
Llewellyn will vacate office in April, immediately after a court ruled that the second extension of her tenure in office was unconstitutional.
The extension, which followed a three-year extension in 2020 when Llewellyn turned 60, was challenged in a lawsuit by the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP).
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