WATERING DOWN THE SILK BRANDY

THERE was a fascinating group picture at the recent awarding of silk status to select attorneys.

At front centre was President Christine Kangaloo, who took heat last year after her husband Kerwin Garcia and brother Colin Kangaloo were awarded senior counsel status less than two months after she became Head of State.

Critics called it a family postcard moment at taxpayers’ expense.

Chief Justice Ivor Archie was also there, having weathered a previous no-confidence vote from attorneys and a call for his impeachment.

Also seated at front was Attorney General Reginald Armour, who had been disqualified by a Miami court in a legal matter and was at the centre of controversies, including critical judicial decisions.

In a profession of several thousands, the few awardees included ruling party figures Faris Al Rawi, Stuart Young and Keith Scotland, fuelling further allegations of politicisation of the process.

Al Rawi had a tortured stint as Attorney General, and, like Young and Scotland, is not a luminary like bygone honoured senior counsels.

To be fair, the S.C. appointment system has been seen by the public to be politically polluted across various administrations.

More and more, the practise is viewed as partisan himself-to-himself.

The heavy biased outlook and seeming lowering of qualifications and experience for silk suggest that the legal profession is no longer producing luminaries.

A former legal expert used to speak of “watering down the brandy.” 

Others, like former Attorney General Karl Hudson-Phillips Q.C. complained of the “serious crisis … in the most important institution in the nation, our legal profession.”

Hudson-Phillips decried “the embarrassing and deafening silence and apparent diffidence on serious professional issues of other seniors in the profession.”

Since then, the crisis appears to have worsened and the silence is even more obvious and disturbing.

The profession’s failure led to veteran attorney Clive Phelps turning down a long-service award from the Law Association five years ago.

Phelps chided his colleagues for not seeking redress for prisoners languishing in remain yard “for decades without trial.”

He also hit out at the lack of support for reform of the “outdated prison system.”

Phelps slammed: “It should be a matter of personal regret for every lawyer that our criminal justice system is what it is, that the conduct of our judiciary … is marked by arrogance and a profound misunderstanding of its role to be impartial adjudicators of disputes.”

Since then, the justice system has become even more snail-paced, attorneys remain generally self-serving, and taxpayers continue to shell out hundreds of millions of dollars to fund public litigation.

Several of the retained highly-paid State attorneys have direct connections to the administration in office.

There is no clamour by prominent attorneys for reform of the horribly inefficient system.

The profession no longer boasts of figures of stature and eminence, as existed up to a couple decades ago when seasoned practitioners enjoyed national esteem.

The common man sees the annual granting of senior status as a charade, a watering down of the brandy in a country in which standards are declining and institutions collapsing.

The system of bestowing silk ought to be overhauled in order to regain the public’s regard.