Appeal Court to hear challenge to ruling on GECOM Chairman on July 25th
The Guyana Court of Appeal will on July 25th hear the challenge to the decision by acting Chief Justice Roxane George to uphold the appointment by President David Granger of retired judge James Patterson as Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM).
In a statement issued yesterday, attorney Anil Nandlall, who is the lawyer for the appellant, PPP Executive Secretary Zulfikar Mustapha, said he has received a Notice from the Court of Appeal informing him that the application that he filed for an early hearing of the appeal against the Chief Justice’s decision will be heard on July 25th, at 9 am.
Justice George issued her decision on June 8th.
Mustapha, in the application filed days after, contended that the appeal concerns the fundamental issue of whether the Chairman of GECOM, the constitutional body responsible for the administration and management of Guyana’s electoral process, beginning with the registration of electors and ending with declaration of results and allocation of seats in relation thereto, “was lawfully appointed in accordance with the letter and spirit of the Constitution of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana.”
According to Mustapha, the minister responsible for Local Government Elections has publicly signalled that those elections will be held by December, 2018, and National and Regional Elections are constitutionally due by August, 2020.
“Regardless how this Honourable Court rules, there is every likelihood that the decision of this Honourable Court would be appealed to the Caribbean Court of Justice. In the circumstances, it is in the national and public interest, that this appeal be heard and determined as early as is reasonably possible,” he stressed.
Following the appointment and swearing-in of the then 84year-old Patterson on October 19th last, Mustapha filed an application in the High Court, contending among other things, that the president had no power to make a unilateral appointment once a list of six names had been submitted to him. Among the issues which the court had to determine was whether the appointment of Justice Patterson was unconstitutional as the applicant contended that the President had no power to make a unilateral appointment once a list of six names was submitted to him.
The court ruled that the President has the power, under Article 161(2) of the Constitution, to reject the list submitted by the Opposition Leader if it is unacceptable to him and to resort to the proviso of that article and choose a person as Chairman of GECOM who is, was, or is qualified to be appointed as a judge in Guyana or the Commonwealth.
The Chief Justice ruled that the President was entitled to resort to the proviso once he found the list that was submitted to be unacceptable, but whether it was unacceptable would have depended on an objective analysis of the persons thereon according to the criteria set out by the President in a letter to Jagdeo.
The judge also found that the President is required to indicate either specifically or generally the reasons why persons on the list or the list was found by him to be unacceptable in order to justify him rejecting the entire list and resorting to the proviso.
To this prerequisite, however, the Chief Justice said, “there is nothing to suggest that this was done, nor was any submission made by the respondent to so indicate, so it must be concluded that the President has, thus far, failed to give reasons for his decision to reject the list as being unacceptable.”