THE Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) will conduct a hearing in the matter relevant to the appointment of the Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) on May 8, 2019.

President of the CCJ, Justice Adrian Saunders, made the announcement during a case management hearing at the Trinidad and Tobago-based regional court.
The case was brought against Attorney General, Basil Williams by People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Executive Secretary, Zulfikar Mustapha, who is represented by Attorney-at-Law, Anil Nandlall. Following the ruling, Nandlall said that the party was taking the matter to the CCJ.

On Friday, Williams said that May 8, 2019 will be convenient for his team. While the parties involved agreed no pre-trial hearing is necessary, Justice Saunders asked that submissions in the case to be filed by April 24, 2019 and that replies by all parties be filed on May 1, 2019.

Last October , the Guyana Court of Appeal unanimously upheld the ruling of Chief Justice (ag), Roxanne George-Wiltshire that President David Granger’s appointment of Justice (ret’d) James Patterson as GECOM chair was constitutional and even suggested that on the first instance of a defective list, the Guyanese leader could have activated the proviso which allowed him to select someone unilaterally.

The unanimous decision was arrived at by Chancellor of the Judiciary (ag), Justice Yonnette Cummings-Edwards and Justices Dawn Gregory and Rishi Persaud after several days of arguments and deliberations.

When the ruling was made last October, one of the judges at the Court of Appeal went as far as saying that the opposition leader could not have expected the Head of State to choose from a list where “one or two or three persons, as the case may be, are not acceptable to him.”

Commentators had argued that a number of controversial figures were on all of the lists submitted by Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo, including Indian rights activist, Ryhan Shah and former PPP elections candidate, Dr. James Rose, among others.