For several years now, there have been strong calls for the government of Trinidad and Tobago to disqualify itself from the Privy Council. This, however, requires consensus in parliament, which is not forthcoming. Justice Srikrishna, then a relatively junior judge of the Bombay High Court, had come into the limelight when a panel headed by him painstakingly probed the 1993 serial blasts that rocked the city.

On his retirement from the Supreme Court in 2006, he headed the Sixth Pay Commission that revised the salaries and allowances of government servants, headed the probe into the violent incidents in the Madras High Court in 2009 and chaired a committee that studied the feasibility of carving a separate state of Telangana from Andhra Pradesh. Speaking at the event, Jamaica-born Judge Patrick Robinson, now a member of the International Court of Justice at The Hague, said: “Our colonial legacy has brainwashed us to believe we are not good. But the CCJ is as good as or better, and can fulfill all the needs of the region. The Privy Council must be weary of people from the Commonwealth.”

Justice Robinson said that the Caribbean people that should not doubt “the greatness of our region”.