Barbados: A country where a person can be a member of the government and a good drinking buddy of the Prime Minister – and only a few days later be appointed as the Chief Justice, supposedly overseeing court cases against the government and his good drinking buddy, the Prime Minister – who appointed him.
Peter Dottin has written an excellent editorial in The Nation News: Time For Independent Body To Oversee Lawyers.
There seems to be a whole lot of call for transparency and accountability happening these days in Barbados. The elites haven’t noticed yet, but the ordinary folks on the street are talking and they aren’t happy…
From The Nation News…
Time For Independent Body To Oversee Lawyers
THE TIME HAS LONG PASSED that an independent body be set up to oversee disciplinary matters relating to lawyers in this country.
It never ceases to amaze me how we can be so vocal for such a body when we are dealing with the Royal Barbados Police Force, but not one call for such a body when it concerns lawyers or for that matter, any other profession held by some in high esteem.
One is left to wonder what message we are sending. Are police officers so unintelligent, untrustworthy and unprofessional that they need to have such a body to protect our citizens from these individuals?
But are lawyers and others “professions” so trustworthy, intelligent and professional that they can regulate their own disciplinary proceeding without external influence?
… continue reading this editorial at The Nation News (link here)
10 Comments
March 7, 2007 at 1:30 pm
I wholeheartedly agree with this call. Barbadian Lawyers are blood suckers. Apologies to those lawyers who haven’t tested any yet.
March 7, 2007 at 4:03 pm
lawyers=parasites
March 7, 2007 at 4:09 pm
in many jurisdictions, lawyers who demonstrate independence, integrity and a high degree of skill are recommended by a panel of lawyers and indepedent laypersons to become judges. Only these people can be chosen by the politicians as judges.
Judges cannot therefore be chosen directly from the political system until they have been cleansed by time, nor can they be chosen simply because they belong to the same lodge.
There must be a political will to clean house but what do you do when many lawyers at the top of the pile and the politicians of both parties have no integrity whatsoever?
March 7, 2007 at 4:47 pm
What’s the difference between a Lawyer
- and a Carp?
One’s a scum-suckin’ bottom feeder…
the other’s a fish!
March 7, 2007 at 5:11 pm
“One’s a scum-suckin’ bottom feeder…
the other’s a fish!”
No Laughable. you are wrong this time. Lawyers in Barbados feed at the TOP. No scum for them, only the best of everything at their clients’ expense.
March 8, 2007 at 12:18 am
we only need to check the lawyer who said he was the winner of the recent mega6 $ 4.4 million.
COULD HE NOT JUST HAVE SAID THAT HE WAS COLLECTING ON BEHALF OF SOMEONE . DID HE REALLY HAVE TO LIE LIKE THAT. Only goes to show what we as individuals have to deal with .i for one could not trust him to be my lawyer
March 8, 2007 at 12:58 am
Hear,hear – Gentle Jim.
It was so sickening to hear this lawyer strenously trying to convince the citizens that ‘this was his money’.
BLP party member isn’t he?
Also chairman of Nat’l Housing,Lawyer for the recent prison commission,representative for gov’t on large legal matters and so on.
Par for the course.
March 9, 2007 at 1:27 pm
What’s the difference between a rooster and a lawyer?
The rooster clucks defiance… and the lawyer…
March 10, 2007 at 12:23 am
I’m all for it. A few years back to lawyers in Barbados ganged together and scewed my Grandmother out of a hefty sum of money over “Squaters rights” and moving someone off her land and having to turn around and pay those lawyers too. From what my family hear one of the same lawyers- has done a lot of wrong things to other people and whenever he hears my family is in the Island he does have to go run to Trinidad playing he’s on “Vacation.” These lawyers in Barbados need any kind of oversight they can get cause a lot of them seem rotten.
March 10, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Lawyers….
and what about doctors…..certain doctors are guilty of multiple cases of malpractice and continue to “do their deeds”……shouldn’t they be struck off the medical register?
Please tell me how to get that done.