Dear Editor,
The recent decision by the Court of Appeal on the No-confidence Motion was a severe shock for the masses; in that the Judges ruled that the No-confidence Motion was not validly pass because the requirement of a self-imposed judicial, ‘absolute majority’ is 34 votes in the National Assembly.
The question that needs to be examined, is how do we appoint a President? According to the Constitution, if there is two or more candidates it states in Article 177 (2) (b) “when there are two or more presidential candidates, if MORE votes are cast in favour of the list in which he is designated as Presidential Candidate than in any other lists”. The important word here is MORE meaning that if any lists having more votes, then the head of that list becomes the Executive President. If we analyse the meaning of the words ‘majority’ and ‘more’, we will notice that majority means a greater number and more means greater, so base on the decision of the Appellate Court if the loss of confidence in a Government needed more than a single vote then we needed to amend the Constitution to have an absolute majority in order to form the Government and elect the President.
Justice is the attempt to enforce fairness and righteous behaviour and at the same time provides a system for punishing who violated it but unfortunately what happens to those who failed to enforced justice fairly. The Judiciary has taken a dangerous path and the Court of Appeal Judges failed in the interpretation of the text of the Constitution in its originalism.
Most originalists believed Constitution text ought to be given the original public meaning that it would have had at the time that it became law.
The Privy Council was Guyana’s final court of appeal until the Caribbean Court of Justice was introduced, the Lords in the Privy Council was guarantee free from all bias behaviour whatsoever reason being that the only arrive at a verdict based on evidence shown. It is of the view of many people that with the present political atmosphere in our country, the Judiciary is being pressured to compromise decisions by using evidence that does not exist in the Constitution of Guyana. It is also of the belief that it will not be easy for Judges being human as they are to ignore political pressure when reaching the final verdict in a case which can cause serious concerns for democracy and the emergence of a dictatorship.
Sincerely,
Zamal Hussain
