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Golding urges Justice Minister to discontinue criticism of judges

Senator Mark Golding, Opposition Spokesman on Justice, has warned his government counterpart Delroy Chuck against continuing with his public criticism of judges.
   
Senator Golding believes the tone of the criticism is unfair and may do more harm than good in fixing the problems.      
   
Mr. Chuck has in recent times made comments about the judicial system as a whole. But part of his criticism has been directed to judges who have not delivered judgments for extended periods.        
   
Senator Golding has acknowledged that there may be instances of tardiness, but he asserts that this would be in the minority. As such, he believes Mr. Chuck has taken the wrong approach. 
 
Speaking Tuesday on RJR's Beyond the Headlines, Senator Golding said judges work "very hard", many times in the least comfortabe situations. 
 
"There are inadequate courtrooms; inadequate secretaries; inadequate judicial clerks; quite often the ACs don't work (so) the courtrooms are hot; sometimes the elevators breakdown - they go through a lot and they are not paid particularly well paid by Caribbean standards either because of the state of our fiscal account," he lamented.  
 
"So I don't think for the minister to be taking them on publicly in a broad-bust way and kind of disparaging them as a class of public servants - I don't think that's the way to go and I would discourage him from doing that," the opposition spokesman continued.  
 
Senator Golding said a code was adopted in 2014 which sets out certain standards that judges have agreed to hold themselves to - a code with which many are compliant. 
 
However, he acknowledged that accountability for performance is critical but is inadequate in Jamaica's judicial system "because we are very strong on independence of the judiciary." 
 
He said there must be more discussion to have mechanisms in place to foster responsibility and accountability in the judicial system. 
 


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