…says out of 277 cases. lost 68,. won 110, 118 dismissed
…defends stewardship of Legal Affairs Ministry
Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister Basil Williams SC has set the record straight on the performance of his chambers providing statistics to show that they have won twice as many cases than they have lost.

Williams’ stewardship of the AG chambers has attracted attention over time owing to comments by his predecessor, Anil Nandlall’s claims of “winning many cases” against the AG.

On the final day of Budget Debate 2019 Williams came up against Nandlall who claimed that it is “impossible to examine the performance” of the chambers. However, providing actual data coming out of the 277 cases that were concluded Williams showed that 118 were dismissed or discontinued; 110 were won by the AG’s Chambers with and without cost and 68 were lost. “So where is the losing Attorney General’s Chambers? Our winnings double what we lost!” Williams said.

In addition, he pointed out that in 2018 the AG’s Chambers won several high profile cases. Two he highlighted were the Bibi Safora Shadick vs the Minister of Communities and the Chief Elections Officer case which was thrown out thwarting the attempt to stymie the hosting of the November 12 Local Government Election (LGE).

Another he noted was the Court of Appeal case of People’s Progressive Party (PPP) executive Zulfikar Mustapha who came against the appointment of Justice James Patterson as Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Chairman. “The Court of Appeal upheld the decision of President David Granger’s decision to appoint retired Justice James Patterson to the office of Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission, as constitutional,” the AG reminded.

Regarding the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) the case of Attorney General of Guyana vs Cedric Richardson, the Court upheld that Presidential term limits were valid.
Meanwhile, the AC Chambers also won the Guyana Stores Limited vs the AG of Guyana, the Revenue Authority and the Commissioner General of the Revenue Authority; the Sattie Basdeo vs Guyana Sugar Corporation Limited, Noel Holder and the AG of Guyana and the Marcus Bisram case.

“These cases are in the CCJ!” Williams said to the Opposition, “I want them to show me where they won comparable cases in the CCJ under the tenure of the Honourable Member [Nandlall]. What he did was to leave us with some ginormous amounts of heavy judgements.”

Altogether, in 2017 some 388 court matters engaged the attention of the law officers of the state and 552 new matters were filed against the state from January 1 to December 3, 2018 taking on a grand total of 940 matters, engaging the attention of Chambers. Of this number, Williams stated that 35 per cent of the litigations were filed by the Attorney General’s Chambers while the remaining 65 per cent were filed in favour of the other litigating parties.

During a press conference last year President David Granger was asked to comment on the performance of the Attorney General and he said: “I wouldn’t blame the Minister of Legal Affairs. I think that within that Ministry, there were some persons who were not doing necessarily the best for the government of Guyana,” President Granger had said. “I do not feel that in the past we had the best representation on some of the cases which we inherited were lost before we started because some of the representation was inadequate and that is a great pity.”

President Granger said, the Attorney General made several internal changes in his Ministry after taking up office “in order to get the best quality representation.” “He is a very experienced lawyer and as long as you go to the courts, you have to expect that the outcomes may not be in your favour but you can’t win everything, and I think he has worked hard,” Mr Granger told the media.

Rule of law
Further criticising the legal sector, Nandlall had accused the coalition of “assault on the rule of law” listing public safety; violations of the Procurement Act and the payment of severance to sugar workers as reference. However, Williams contested that the PPP should be the last to speak on the topic as the rule of law never existed in the 23 years of their time in office. “What their rule produced was a gangster [Roger Khan] advertising in the national newspapers that he was in charge of the national security of this country.

What that administration produced is the largest killing field in the history of CARICOM and Guyana where over 800 young Guyanese –husbands, brothers, uncles, sons — were decimated in a crime spree in this country never seen before,” he said, adding: “They are in no position to lecture us on anything about the rule of law!”

Touching too on the matter of severance payment to sugar workers brought up, Williams added: “What we did is we saved the sugar industry. We inherited a sugar industry that as in a [terrible] state and we the APNU/AFC government rolled back all those years and we decided that notwithstanding the failures of the PPP, we were going to ensure that we salvage the sugar industry and justify the existence of the sugar workers in this country.”

Williams said that the government, then Opposition, had advised the PPP that sugar was not going to have the preferred position under the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) convention and that they should begin retraining workers. Instead, he added, that the sugar industry was being managed by former president Donald Ramotar and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) who was operating out of New York.

“They never did that [retrained workers],” Williams said. “So we refute out of hand that we have anything to do with the sugar industry reaching its nadir and we will continue to look after the sugar workers to the best of our ability. The Legal Affairs Minister said that for years he has spoken in the House of Assembly in support of traditional workers in the public service which were even neglected by the Government in favour of the sugar workers. “The divisive politics of the past will prove to be the death knell of the People’s Progressive Party,” he forecasted.

“We will not be side tracked. You have the biggest budget ever in this country and they’re trying to tell the nation that big is little. That big is nothing, so you can’t fool the people of this country. What the budget is saying to you is that inclusivity has triumphed over divisiveness that hitherto permeated the politics of this country.