CHIEF Justice (ag) Roxane George-Wiltshire will rule on Thursday on at least two of the constitutional cases that brought into question the validity of the vote of no-confidence against the government. Ahead of her ruling, Attorney General Basil Williams said he is confident of a win.

The attorney general by way of a Fixed Date Application is challenging passage of the no-confidence motion against the A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) government on the basis that the opposition did not secure a majority as required by the constitution.

The case, The Attorney General v The Speaker and the Opposition Leader was the last of three critical constitutional cases to have been heard by the chief justice last week. Moments after arguing his case on Friday, Williams stood in the corridor of the High Court and expressed his confidence.

“I am very confident, we did a lot of work in this matter, and we believe that the court will make its decision,” he told reporters.
Inside the courtroom, he with the support of Attorney-at-Law Maxwell Edwards argued that the government could not have been defeated by way of a no-confidence motion when Article 70 guarantees it a five-year term in office.

Resolution 101 is a certification by the Clerk of the National Assembly Sherlock Isaacs that the no-confidence motion was validly passed on December 21, 2018 by a majority vote. But the attorney general submitted that because the resolution is subsidiary legislation, it cannot lawfully abridge or curtail government’s five-year term in office as provided for in Article 70 (3).

“It (Resolution 101) is inconsistent with Article 70 (3) which is an entrenched provision guaranteeing the government five years, and only the president who is heading the government, could reduce the term not the Opposition,” he explained outside the courtroom.

The question of what constitutes a majority in the 65-member National Assembly was also heavy debated throughout the case. The attorney general and his team are arguing that by virtue of the requirements laid out in Article 106 (6), the Opposition needed 34 votes and not 33 to defeat the government.

“We had the question of the majority which you know has permeated all three cases and we showed that Mr. Nandlall failed to deal with the fact that the constitution has several different ‘majority.’ The simple majority is the simplest one; the absolute majority has to be greater than the 33 of the simple majority because it requires all the elected members; and then you have two-thirds majority,” he explained.

In support of his arguments he cited several cases in which the half-plus-one method was used to acquire the absolute majority.
Anil Nandlall, the attorney representing the Leader of the Opposition Bharrat Jagdeo, put forward four definitions to support his argument that a majority refers to more than half. “The inevitable consequence of the approach which the attorney general advocates for determining a majority is that in every case where a body is made up of an uneven number of persons, a majority of that body must exceed the minority by at least three.

By his calculation, a majority of 11 would be 7 (11÷2=5 1/2,, rounded to 6;6+1=7). This would necessarily mean that a court comprising three judges can only make decisions unanimously, since a majority of three must necessarily be three,” Nandlall submitted.
In addition to ruling in the case brought by the attorney general, the chief justice said she will also rule in the case Christopher Ram vs The Attorney General and the Leader of the Opposition, on the basis that they are similar. Ram, a political commentator, has asked the court to rule that the no-confidence motion was validly passed.

However, for the case Compton Reid v The Speaker, Charrandass Persaud and attorney general, the chief justice, though not confirming that she would rule in the matter on January 31, expressed the hope to do so. Reid is challenging the validity of the vote cast by Charrandass Persaud on the basis that he breached the constitution by having dual citizenship while being a Member of the National Assembly.

Persaud on December 21, 2018 broke ranks and voted in favour of an Opposition-sponsored no-confidence motion to bring down his own government. He has since been expelled from the Alliance For Change (AFC) and recalled from Parliament.

Speaker of National Assembly, Dr. Barton Scotland, through his Attorney, Rafiq Khan, SC, informed the court that he will abide by the chief justice’s ruling.