MY attention has been drawn to a letter written by the Honourable Attorney-General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Mr. Charles R. Ramson, published in the Guyana Chronicle of August 04, 2010 under the caption: “Ramson sets the record straight.” The letter is in response to George Barclay’s report of the decision of the Guyana Court of Appeal in the Hemchand Persaud appeal. I represented Hemchand Persaud at the hearing of that appeal and I therefore conceive that I have a duty to respond to the Attorney General’s letter.
The main thrust of Mr. Ramson’s letter is that he was sitting as a Justice of Appeal when the appeal was filed and that it was his predecessor, Doodnauth Singh SC., who was in fact the author of the grounds of appeal. He accordingly complains that the report in the press that the Honourable Chancellor pointed out that the contention by the AG was “a preposterous one since there was a failure by the AG to recognise and appreciate the supremacy of the law of the Constitution and that of the land” was unfortunate.
It is important to bring to the attention of your readers, the nature and origin of the submission made on behalf of the Attorney-General which the Honourable Chancellor described as preposterous. His Honour referred to the decision of the Chief Justice who found that my client’s constitutional right to a fair hearing within a reasonable time had been violated by the State. The Chancellor noted that the Chief Justice applied the provisions of Article 139 (4) of the Constitution which prescribed that, in such a situation, the person whose right has been so violated “shall be released”. The Constitutional remedy, as observed by the Chancellor, is expressed in imperative language. The submission made on behalf of the Attorney-General, however, was that the issue whether or not to grant bail depended primarily on a finding that there was a breach of the constitutional right to a hearing within a reasonable time and, in considering the question of bail in such a circumstance, “the court or judge is constrained by the settled principles of common law.”
It was because that particular submission urged the Court of Appeal to ignore the constitutional prescription expressed in the words “shall be released” and to follow the common-law practice of refusing bail to persons charged with murder that it was described as preposterous by His Honour the Chancellor, who explained that the Chief Justice was enjoined by the provisions of Article 139 (4) of the Constitution to release my client as the Chancellor noted that the Chief Justice  had no discretion about the matter.
Mr. Ramson’s anxiety to preserve intact his self-assessment of his impeccable forensic record spanning 38 years is commendable. He omitted to disclose that written submissions in support of the arguments for the State in the appeal were laid over to the Court by Counsel from the Chambers of the Attorney-General and a copy served upon me. Those written submissions which embraced the grounds for appeal, which Mr. Ramson is so intent on disassociating himself from, were signed “for and on behalf of the Honourable Attorney-General, Mr. Charles Ramson”! This fact was not lost on the judges and was noted by the Chancellor during the course of the delivery of the decision.
This must also be viewed in light of the admission by Mr. Ramson that he wrote a critique of Chief Justice Chang’s decision which he shared with the Chancellor. He does not say whether the Chancellor concurred with the opinions he expressed in the critique without having the benefit of arguments from Counsel concerning the matter. The Attorney-General however goes on to say that “with the effluxion of time and the attendant configuration of circumstances” the Chancellor was entitled to a change of mind. This seemingly magnanimous stance was undone by his invective that “perversity and absurdity are the expectoration of the untutored”: the innuendo is a very stark one. There was nothing perverse or absurd about the Chancellor’s decision and the comments of the Attorney-General unfortunate, as they were, amounted to a scurrilous attack upon the Chancellor, the Judges of the Court of Appeal and the decision of that Court.
Regrettably, the Chancellor, unlike the Attorney-General, is constrained by the tradition of his office from treading unto the realm of public debate when others rush in.