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THE COURT of Appeal’s September 29 ruling in the landmark constitutional case brought by mother-and-daughter duo Joanne Pantin and Raehana Lorick burnishes two important principles: governments must be transparent and citizens who travel abroad have a right to return.
The initial response of the Dr Keith Rowley administration to the covid19 pandemic in 2020 was the backdrop to the matter. But key elements of that response were not in dispute.
Necessary and justified was the closure of the borders. Essential was imposing testing and quarantine. At this early and fraught stage of the pandemic, epidemiology and global scientific consensus were, correctly, touchstones in policy formulation. No vaccine was yet available; the risk of a surge in numbers causing the country’s entire health system to collapse through exponential multiplication due to high levels of returns had to be managed, even if this meant tough choices. The borders were closed on March 22, 2020. Within four months, 5,539 petitioned minister of national security Stuart Young seeking exemptions. A year later, the number was more than twice as high.
Where things went wrong, according to the justices, was in the opaque way in which exemptions were considered. The court found a failure by the then-government to disclose criteria. This is likely because no such criteria really held sway: what the state needed, given the fluidity of the unprecedented situation, was discretion to deal with applications on a case-by-case basis. However, on this specific issue of exemptions, the balance veered too far into infringing a bedrock entitlement, with no countervailing measures.
“A citizen’s re-entry to their home country is a most fundamental right,” declared Justice Ronnie Boodoosingh in his concurrence. If that right is tampered with, he noted, it must be done “only in the least intrusive and most transparent way.”
Aggravating the case were its harrowing facts, involving pregnancy and the failure of the state to reply properly to e-mails from the appellants.
Specifics aside, the judgement resurrects the need for a general review of the response to covid19. Other countries have long conducted or begun such inquiries in order to learn lessons; indeed, the UNC campaigned earlier this year on the promise of a full diagnostic of the PNM’s management of the pandemic from clinical and economic perspectives. That is overdue.
But the ruling is also wider than just past and future executive decision-making.
At a time when the notion of birthright citizenship is under attack internationally, it places Trinidad and Tobago squarely into the bracket of countries for whom citizenship still means something, legally and ethically. It is a shame it took a court case, ably marshalled by attorney Anand Ramlogan, SC, for this to be spelled out.
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