By Vernon Daley, Staff ReporterSALARIES FOR judges will account for a huge chunk of the roughly US$6 million that it will cost to run the operations of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) each year.
About one-third of the CCJ's annual operational costs, or an average of US$2 million, will go towards paying salaries and gratuities for the nine judges who will sit on the court.
The figures are contained in a document prepared by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat and released to The Gleaner yesterday by the Attorney-General's Department.
The document shows the 10-year cash flow projection for the CCJ and gives a rough breakdown of how the money from the US$100 million trust fund, being set up to finance the court, will be used. Capital costs, salaries for administrative staff, security, and management fees for the trust fund are some of the items that will take the remaining US$4 million in the annual budget.
CDB TO MANAGE FUNDS
Some US$12 million will be used for start-up expenses of the CCJ, while the remaining US$88 million will be placed in the special trust fund that will be managed by the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB).
The fund is projected to yield just over US$5 million in interest each year and it is this money that will be used to defray the annual cost of the court.
An official at the Attorney-General's Department said yesterday that a Ministry Paper on the CCJ is now being prepared and will include more complete information about the funding of the court.
At the recently-concluded CARICOM summit in Montego Bay, President of the CDB, Compton Bourne, told journalists that the bank was well on its way to secure the funds on the international capital markets to finance the court.
The inauguration of the CCJ will take place in November and the court is set to start sittings by the middle of next year, Sheldon McDonald, co-ordinator of the CCJ told The Gleaner earlier this week.
Currently, persons are being nominated to the Regional Judicial and Legal Services Commission, which is the body that will name judges to the CCJ. Prominent constitutional lawyer, Dr. Lloyd Barnett, is among four lawyers who were nominated to the commission by the various law and bar associations across the region, at a meeting in Barbados on the weekend.
MORE MEMBERS EXPECTED
Mr. McDonald said that the other persons who will sit on the 11-member commission are currently being nominated by specified groups within the region and the full slate is set to be named by the end of this month.
The establishment of the court, which has been in the making for many years, has been plagued by controversy, particularly in Jamaica, where the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), has opposed it replacing the UK-based Privy Council as the country's final appeal court. In fact, the party's leader, Edward Seaga, has vowed that a future JLP Government would pull out of the court, if the Government goes into it without consulting the people in a referendum.
