JAMAICA-PNP to prioritise making the CCJ Jamaica’s final Court if elected.

KINGSTON, Jamaica, CMC – The People’s National Party (PNP) has pledged to make the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) Jamaica’s final appellate Court if it forms the next government, reigniting the national debate over judicial sovereignty and constitutional reform.

Speaking at a large public meeting at Musgrave Square in Brown’s Town, St Ann, on Thursday night, PNP President and Opposition Leader Mark Golding declared the party’s unwavering commitment to severing judicial ties with the UK-based Privy Council. The meeting marked the official presentation of the party’s four candidates for the parish and drew what observers described as a “massive crowd.”
Mark Golding, President of the People’s National Party (PNP)

Golding, who in January withdrew the PNP’s representatives from the Joint Select Committee of Parliament reviewing the Constitution (Amendment) Republic Bill, accused the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) of stalling national progress. He said the JLP’s refusal to accept the CCJ as the country’s final Court, simultaneously with moves to remove the British Monarch as Head of State, was unacceptable.

“The time has come for full sovereignty,” Golding told supporters. “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 benefited from access to justice.”

He criticised the Privy Council as an outdated and elitist institution, far removed from the realities of ordinary Jamaicans. “Nobody in this audience can take a case to the Privy Council,” he argued. “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 need to get.”

Golding pointed out that the CCJ, established two decades ago, is not only fully funded through a regional trust fund to which Jamaica contributes, but also insulated from political interference. “It has its regional judicial commission for the appointment of judges, which no politician in any island can interfere with,” he said.

The PNP leader also noted the historical irony that it was a former JLP Prime Minister, Hugh Shearer, who first proposed a regional final appellate court in the early 1970s. “And yet now dem a gi it a fight, it nuh mek nuh sense people,” he said to cheers from the crowd. “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.”