The jurisprudence of Guyana Court of Appeal

Dear Editor,
Within recent times, the decisions of our Court of Appeal have not fared well upon review by the Caribbean Court of Justice. Going back a bit, one noticed the expressions of surprise at the decision of our Court of Appeal in the “ no confidence vote “ appeal, that 33 votes by members of our 65-seat National Assembly did not constitute a majority vote in the Assembly.
In so ruling, the majority of the Judges of the Court of Appeal were clearly influenced by the publicly disclosed Hughesenian formula proposed at one of the now famous “press conferences”, that: to arrive at the majority number in the National Assembly, every effort had to be made to avoid cutting a member in half, and that what was preferred was rounding off exercise. This formula was widely supported by a vacillating group of men, including Messrs. Nagamootoo (of Green Shirt fame), Ramjattan, and Basil Williams (the latter in his advocacy sounded rather unsure about the true nature of the Hughesenian formula).
It is sufficient to say that the Judges of the Caribbean Court of Justice poured scorn on the reasoning of the majority of the Guyana Court of Appeal.
More recently, Guyanese, and more particularly our legal fraternity, witnessed the effort by a majority of the Judges of our Court of Appeal to advance the local jurisprudence in an endeavour to give themselves jurisdiction in an elections-related matter by the recognition, introduction, and application of what lawyers along the corridors of the High Court are referring to as “the transmogrification doctrine” whereby simply put, the majority of the Judges, applied to substantial constitutional issues the rules applicable to ordinary civil litigation.
Again, the Caribbean Court of Justice had no difficulty in rejecting the reasoning of the majority decision of the Court of Appeal.
These unsound decisions lead to the question “ What next?”

Sincerely,
Selwyn Persaud