IT seems that the Opposition is in total confusion with regard to the Police Commissioner Henry Greene issue. Acting Chief Justice Ian Chang had quashed the advice of Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Shalimar Ali-Hack to charge Greene with rape, and according to a Stabroek News article published on Saturday, Nigel Hughes, the attorney for the woman who accused the Police Commissioner of the act, says that he will be proceeding with private charges against Greene.
Hughes, said he will be writing the DPP for statements that were gathered during the investigation in order to pursue a private criminal prosecution.
Speaking on the advice of Attorney General Anil Nandlall to the DPP not to appeal the Chief Justice’s decision, Hughes told Stabroek News that he knew from the inception that it was not possible.
In an invited comment yesterday on the contradictory positions being taken by Opposition parties A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance For Change (AFC) on this matter, Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs Anil Nandlall said the two leaders of the AFC, both of whom are lawyers, have publicly adopted contradictory positions on the way forward in the Henry Greene case.
Nandlall said firstly, party leader and AFC Member of Parliament Khemraj Ramjattan has expressed the view that the position should be appealed, while Nigel Hughes, AFC member and husband of AFC MP Cathy Hughes, stated in Stabroek News on Saturday that the decision is unappealable.
“Yet, Mr. Hughes wrote a letter to me last week requesting that I appeal the decision,” the Attorney General noted.
“So not only do we have a contradictory position between Mr. Hughes and his leader, Mr. Ramjattan, but we have Mr. Hughes even contradicting himself,” Nandlall observed.
He said the same  position seems to exist in the APNU camp, since on one hand, you have MP and Attorney-at-law Deborah Backer publicly criticising the Chief Justice’s decision and expressing support for the DPP’s recommendation to institute the charge of rape against Henry Greene, and then on the other hand, attorney-at-law Mr. Basil Williams, Shadow Legal Affairs Minister and MP, in criticising the DPP in his Parliament budget debate speech, alleging that the DPP has lost her way, criticising the DPP in a number of decisions, including the recommendation in the Henry Greene matter.
“As usual, even on this singular issue, you have four lawyers in the leadership of the Opposition each expressing a view different from the other,” he concluded.