PSOJ

They say that if you live long enough you will have many déjà vu experiences.  And this morning is a déjà vu experience for me.  In 2006, when I was on pre-retirement leave from the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, I addressed the Chairman’s Club of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica. The subject on which I spoke is identical to the subject on which I am speaking this morning.  How does it come that I am here?  It is because over the last three years, despite all of the hazards, I have kept faith with my belief that one day, the Jamaican private sector, through its institutional bodies, is going to set up a structure that will provide for alternate dispute resolution of commercial disputes.  And so, apart from serving as the representative of the Private Sector Organisation on the Jamaica Justice System Reform Committee which put out a report in 2007 on what is needed to reform the justice system in the country; apart from sitting and chairing the first Justice Reform Committee of the PSOJ, even after I returned to the Bahamas, I have continued to keep in touch by email and telephone with the Private Sector Organisation’s efforts to get this going.