Jagdeo concerned about APNU/AFC candidate representing GECOM in appeal
Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo has expressed concerns over the team of lawyers representing the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) in court when one of them is a candidate on the incumbent APNU/AFC Coalition’s National Top-up list.
At his weekly press conference on Thursday, Jagdeo questioned the authority upon which Attorney-at-Law Roysdale Forde and Senior Counsel Stanley Marcus are representing GECOM in the appeal filed against the High Court’s ruling that barred the removal of persons’ names from the National Register of Registrants (NRR) database, which the scrapped the house- to-house registration exercise had sought to do.
This decision stemmed from a legal challenge mounted by Attorney-at-law Christopher Ram, questioning the legality of the H2H exercise. GECOM is named a respondent in the appeal filed by the state.
Attorney-at-law Roysdale Forde
“Here is it that GECOM is part of the case, and you have two lawyers representing GECOM that don’t have the authority of the Commission, because the matter was never discussed at the Commission to represent them. And guess who the lawyers are? One is Marcus, and the other one is Roysdale Forde who is on APNU Top-up list,” the Opposition Leader asserted.
Senior Counsel Stanley Marcus had represented GECOM in the No-Confidence Motion (NCM) cases in the various courts. He had also taken up GECOM’s defence at the High Court level when Ram filed the case against the H2H registration exercise on June 23 last year.
However, questions have been raised about who was directing and advising the Senior Counsel in his representation of GECOM at a time when the Elections Commission was without a Chairperson and had not met since June 11, 2019.
Former GECOM Chairman Justice (ret’d) James Patterson had stepped down on June 24 last year after the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) had ruled that his unilateral appointment in 2017 was unconstitutional.
SC Marcus is again under the microscope, with the Opposition Leader questioning with whose authority he is representing GECOM, when the Commission did not discuss this matter at any of its meetings.
Senior Counsel Stanley Marcus
To this end, Jagdeo is calling on the current GECOM Chairperson, Justice (ret’d) Claudette Singh, to intervene.
“I suspect they are on [Attorney General] Basil Williams’s team but have the cover of GECOM, and that should be ended immediately. The Chair of GECOM should intervene immediately and say in this matter, ‘You don’t have the imprimatur of this Commission, you can’t go to court and argue that you’re representing us’. It’s like imposters in court, because they are arguing really to slow down elections or stop the elections. So this matter we’re going to be pursuing aggressively,” the Opposition Leader contended.
The appeal filed by the State against the High Court order that GECOM cannot remove names from the NRR unless they are otherwise disqualified as outlined in the Constitution is now up for ruling, after parties closed verbal submissions on Wednesday.
In her ruling in August, Chief Justice (ag) Roxane George had stated that “residency requirements from citizens are no longer a qualification for registration”, and so it is unconstitutional for their names to be removed from the NRR Database.
The H2H registration was seeking to create a new database, which would have disenfranchised many registered persons who are either at another part of the country or out of the country, and could not be captured during the exercise.
Senior Counsel Ralph Ramkarran, who is representing Ram, argued that the court should decline jurisdiction and not rule on the matter, since the electoral process has commenced and any decision now will impact the ongoing preparations for the upcoming March 2 General and Regional Elections.
Contending that this case is an electoral issue, Ramkarran pointed out that, in the circumstances, this matter will now have to be dealt with as an elections petition after the upcoming polls, as prescribed in the Constitution.
“Once the elections train leaves the station, every issue has to be determined by way of elections petition… Your Honour has no option, in my respectful view, other than declining jurisdiction and giving the opportunity to the appellant to start the matter after elections by way of elections petition…,” Ramkarran told the appellate court.
But Attorney General Williams argued that the issue has nothing to do with elections, but is a constitutional matter on whether residency is a fundamental prerequisite for voting in Guyana.
“The argument of election matters ought to be rejected because this is a constitutional issue that goes to the heart of our democratic system, which is the requirement for residency for purposes of qualification to be an elector…and so the court will be properly in order to accept the jurisdiction,” the AG contended in his final submission to the appellate panel, led by acting Chancellor Justice Yonette Cummings-Edwards, and including Justices Rishi Persaud and Dawn Gregory.
