Rohee complains of delay in election petition trial

The Opposition People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) is accusing the judiciary of unnecessarily delaying the setting of a date for the elections petition to go to trial.

During a news conference on Monday, the Party’s General Secretary, Clement Rohee said that the delay was worrisome.

“It is troubling and worrisome that a date has not been fixed and no explicable reason offered for its delay,” Rohee lamented.

The petition, which was filed on June 24 last year, is asking the court to grant a number of orders, including the nullification of the 2015 General and Regional Elections as well as an order for new elections to be held.

The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) subsequently filed a summons to strike out the petition.

But former acting Chief Justice Ian Chang, days before retirement, returned to the courtroom to quash the counter litigation, paving the way for the petition to go to trial.

However, GECOM has since appealed the ruling.

Legal consultants have told this newspaper that the appeal does not stop the Chief Justice from setting a date for the trial.

Rohee said the PPP/C maintained that the elections were unlawfully conducted and the results were affected by unlawful actions and omissions.

He explained that the petition was basically asking the court to determine and declare that the process was so flawed, contained so many procedural errors and instances of fraudulent and/or suspicious actions that the results that were derived could not be credibly deemed as an accurate representation of the will of the electorate.

In this regard, Rohee is demanding that there be an end to the delays and that a date be fixed immediately.

He posited that, after all, justice delayed was justice denied.