The allegations that have emerged about the operations of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) have not affected the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) stance that it should replace the Britain-based Privy Council as Jamaica’s final court of appeal, party President Mark Golding has declared.

In fact, Golding told The Gleaner that the emails cited by Trinidad and Tobago newspaper, the Sunday Express, “disclose an internal environment in which the judges feel free to express their independent and opposing views forthrightly to the president of the court”.

He argued that “such healthy openness in expressing contested opinions is a sound basis upon which a strong judicial institution has been built”.