President of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) Dr Ronnie Yearwood has suggested that the exclusion of sitting judges from the revamped Integrity in Public Life Bill is a form of “segregating the legal profession”.And he has called on the Barbados Bar Association to publicly state its views on current judges escaping scrutiny while all magistrates and future judges are being required to declare their assets under the legislation.In an interview with Barbados TODAY, Dr Yearwood insisted that it is unacceptable that current magistrates are covered by the legislation while their counterparts in the higher courts are not.“In our legal system, magistrates do a lot of the heavy lifting. A lot of the cases start in the magistrates’ court. So, you are saying that magistrates have to make declarations but people further up the pecking order don’t have to make the declaration? So how are you treating magistrates? That cannot be right,” he insisted.
