Nandlall, Bar Association Head welcome activation of...

the Act was not brought into operation during his tenure under the PPP/C administration was because it had been waiting for the CPR to come into force.

In her ruling, Justice George found that Williams had a duty to have already brought the legislation into effect.

Among other things, the Chief Justice noted that with these rules having been enforced, it was thereafter for the Minister of Legal Affairs to have also brought the JRA into operation, irrespective of which government is in power.

Justice George declared that Williams would have breached his duty by not bringing the Act into force, while noting that no excuse had been given and the delay on his part could only have been seen as a refusal to operationalise that law.

Appellate judge Justice Rafiq Khan SC, in delivering his decision on Williams’ subsequent application for a stay of execution, was critical of the AG’s behaviour, particularly his disregard in carrying out his mandate in keeping with the Act.

He stated that the JRA became part of the laws of Guyana when the then president assented to it on November 2nd, 2010. “Parliament saw it fit to delay the coming into operation of the JRA by vesting in the minister the power to bring it into force by order,” he said, while adding that Parliament intended that it should be operational so as to make available to the public a number of remedies for judicial review.

He said that the “only credible and sensible explanation” of the failure to have the JRA immediately brought into existence was that advanced by Nandlall, that is, that “the CPR which supplied the procedure and practice for the operation of the JRA was not at the time in a state of readiness.” He, however, pointed out that at the present time this is no longer the case.

The judge said that in his opinion, what exists in this case is the “frustration and obstruction of the legislative arm of the government” in carrying out its constitutional mandate of making laws for the peace, order and good government of Guyana “by a member of the executive who reflexively seeks refuge in a rigid and anachronistic interpretation of the doctrine of separation of powers long discarded by modern constitutional law thinking and concepts of good governance and democracy.” He said that it is also apparent that the executive “seems to be obstructing itself.”

He also said that Williams’ resistance to bringing the act into operation is “not a satisfactory state of affairs.” Section (1) of the Act, he said, makes it clear that Williams is duty-bound to make it operational.