Former Law Association president Martin Daly SC says the questions posed to candidates for appointment to the High Court reinforce the case for “complete transparency.”
He made the comment during CNC3’s Morning Brew programme yesterday, after the T&T Guardian exclusively reported details of the exam given by the Judicial and Legal Services Commission (JLSC) to five prospective judges, including former chief magistrate Marcia Ayers-Caesar.
One of the questions in section A of the exam stated: A bat and ball together cost $1.10. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
Yesterday, Daly said: “We like bats and we adopt all these things. I would have failed that part of the test. That is why we need complete transparency.”
He added: “One thing is clear, this claim that they were subjected to rigorous process has gone from a claim that can’t be supported to frankly laughable.”
Chief Justice Ivor Archie and the JLSC have come under fire for the manner in which they treated the Ayers-Caesar matter, after she was forced to resign soon after being elevated to the High Court on April 12 when it was realised she still had 53 outstanding matters in the lower court. The JLSC has claimed she misled it during the interview process, but Ayers-Caesar has since denied this claim and said she was forced to resign.
Speaking about the process which the candidates were taken through yesterday, Daly said: “Where is the rigorous process if you could not go down to the note taking unit and find out how many part-heard matters a sitting judicial officer had? Where is the rigorous process with those kinds of questions and most of all they said they subjected them to isometric testing ,which did not show up that somebody was capable of misrepresentation or that somebody had a strong interest in the female anatomy.”
Ayers-Caesar, he said, “is not the only appointment being questioned, people are offended by the interest of the female anatomy for a High Court judge and how it is exposed on social media.”
He said 60 per cent of employers in the United States currently “look at social media posts” in the course of setting out to employ workers.
“That is another aspect of due diligence that is missing. At the end of the day it is about public confidence,” he said in reference to the social media posts made by Kevin Ramcharan, who was also sworn in as a judge on April 12.
Daly said “if a section of society feels that an appointee does not respect them, then they will not respect the justice that is handed out by someone who is appointed for life.”
“This round of appointments that was said to be commendable was not so commendable, that is part of the wrong of digging your heels in and not taking responsibility,” he said.
Declaring that judges have “enormous powers” and the machinery to remove them is “so cumbersome,” Daly said there is need for a high standard “to examine the credentials and background of these people.”
He said the CJ and JLSC created “this mess and they need to take responsibility.” He dismissed talk about impeachment on the CJ saying it was an issue of “taking responsibility.
The longer the situation continues unresolved, he said, “public confidence will remain undermined,” and judges will be subject to “unpleasant and unjustified attacks as happened with Justice Seepersad and people will feel they have free sheet to attack judges.”
Daly said one was left to wonder, if Ayers-Caesar informed the CJ that she had 28 outstanding matters on April 10, “why didn’t that trigger the alarm that the list of 52 triggered. The plot thickens.”
He said if she was able to find out about her outstanding matters in “less than 24 hours, it begs the question are we being given full disclosure on the material that was available? Why wasn’t the swearing-in postponed?”
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