Integrity law creates “segregation” in legal system – DLP leader

President of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) Dr Ronnie Yearwood has suggested that the exclusion of sitting judges from the revamped Integrity in Public Life Bill is a form of “segregating the legal profession”.

And he has called on the Barbados Bar Association to publicly state its views on current judges escaping scrutiny while all magistrates and future judges are being required to declare their assets under the legislation.

In an interview with Barbados TODAY, Dr Yearwood insisted that it is unacceptable that current magistrates are covered by the legislation while their counterparts in the higher courts are not.

“In our legal system, magistrates do a lot of the heavy lifting. A lot of the cases start in the magistrates’ court. So, you are saying that magistrates have to make declarations but people further up the pecking order don’t have to make the declaration? So how are you treating magistrates? That cannot be right,” he insisted.

The Integrity in Public Life Bill which was laid in Parliament last Tuesday will see new judges, Directors of Public Prosecution and Auditors-General among those who will have to declare their assets. Individuals currently in those positions will not fall under the legislation since, according to Attorney General Dale Marshall, that would be in breach of their constitutional protection.

Dr Yearwood, a University of the West Indies law lecturer, reiterated his disagreement with this “two-tier system of integrity”.

“You cannot be covering some judges and not other judges. You have to cover all of them. And the reality is that some of these folks that wouldn’t be covered, it is not like they are old people, some of them are relatively young in terms of their position,” he said.

“So, they would be in a system where they are not covered for maybe 10-15 years. You will be looking at a serious time span of no coverage, where all new judges coming into the system will be covered, and that can’t be right. It is not fair that one set of people are covered and another set of people are not covered. If you are covering, you have to cover everybody.”

The DLP leader said what was even more disheartening was that even as some judges were exempt, all magistrates will be required to place all or part of their assets in a blind trust.

He added that while the blind trust will be a useful tool for wealthy persons who come into public life, it can become a problematic instrument given the size of Barbados society.

Dr Yearwood suggested that provisions be made for certified managers to monitor the activities of the trust.

“You can’t just have a blind trust, allow people to put assets into the blind trust under the view that they don’t know what assets are going in.

“There has to be some way that you can understand what is going on with that blind trust and have certified managers and persons to inspect that to make the blind trust an effective tool in our system. Our countries are so small, anything could be going on in there. But there is nothing wrong with the blind trust, it makes sense,” he said.

(anestahenry@barbadostoday.bb)