ahead of Thursday’s rescheduled hearing of stay applications
With Appeal Court Judge, Justice Rishi Persaud expected to hear submissions on the stay applications made by Attorney General (AG) Basil Williams, lawyers representing Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo are yet to be served with the amended summons filed to stay last month’s High Court rulings on the No-confidence Motion against the coalition Government.
Williams is seeking to keep the President and the coalition Cabinet in office until the hearing and determination of the appeals filed on the No-confidence Motion.
In fact, the stay applications were expected to be heard last week but the Appeal Judge was forced to suspend the hearing after some defects were observed in the summons. The AG was then ordered to correct the defects and refile the summons before reserving on the parties involved in the matter.
In a subsequent statement from the AG’s Chambers last Thursday, it was noted that the Notice of Appeal was amended, refiled and served.
One of the errors made was the omission of the Opposition Leader in the Notice of Appeal. But according to Attorney Anil Nandlall, who is representing Jagdeo in these matters, he nor his office has received the refiled documents from the AG’s office.
“The court had ruled that the documents were defective and that they should be corrected. Part of that correction was to serve on the parties, the corrected documents but as of 5pm (Tuesday afternoon), nothing was received,” Nandlall told Guyana Time.
When contacted, however, the other party in these litigations, Attorney Christopher Ram, confirmed to this newspaper that he did receive the amended summons.
Last month, acting Chief Justice Roxane George had refused the AG’s request for a stay and conservatory order prior to her rulings, saying she could not grant a stay of the court’s clarification of a decision taken by the National Assembly.
As such, Government asked the Appeal Court earlier this month to stay the High Court’s rulings while it considers setting aside the judgements made by Justice George.
In the first case of AG v Speaker of the National Assembly and Opposition Leader, which deals with the 33 to 32 majority that was used to pass the No-confidence Motion, Williams is arguing that “there was a miscalculation of the majority of all elected members as required under Article 106 (6) of the Constitution for the Government to be defeated on a vote of no confidence”.
Meanwhile, another case was AG v Christopher Ram, who had successfully sought to have the High Court validate the no-confidence resolution and have Government comply with constitutional provisions to demit office and call elections no later than March of this year.
The Chief Justice had upheld both cases, ruling that the no-confidence vote was validly passed, and that Cabinet should have resigned. However, Williams in his appeal is claiming that the Chief Justice made an error in both of these rulings.
In addition, Appeals were also filed by the lawyers appearing for Minister of State Joseph Harmon; while a cross appeal was filed on behalf of Christopher Ram and an appeal is also to be filed on behalf of Compton Reid – the private citizen who legally challenged the validity of former AFC Member of Parliament Charrandas Persaud’s vote on the No-confidence Motion given his dual citizenship status. The Chief Justice had ruled that while it was unconstitutional for dual citizens to be a sitting in the National Assembly, Persaud’s vote, which toppled the coalition Government, was valid.