ATTORNEY General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Basil Williams, is asking the High Court to throw out the Fixed Date Application (FDA) filed by People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Attorney-at-Law, Anil Nandlall, for an order, compelling Cabinet, including the President, to resign.

In a Notice of Application filed on Friday, the attorney general asked Chief Justice, Roxane George-Wiltshire, to declare that the High Court will not exercise its jurisdiction to grant the orders sought in the FDA filed by Nandlall on August 26, 2019. Minister Williams is also asking the High Court to issue an order striking out Nandlall’s application on the basis that is an abuse of the process of the court.

In his FDA, Nandlall, in seeking the order compelling the Cabinet to resign, said such ought to be the consequence of the no-confidence motion passed against the government last December in accordance with Article 106 (6) of the Constitution. He is also seeking a Conservatory Order restraining the Cabinet, inclusive of the President, from meeting, making decisions as, or performing the functions of Cabinet.

But the Attorney General, in support of his application, laid down more than 10 grounds why Nandlall’s FDA should be quashed. He pointed out that Nandlall represented the Leader of the Opposition Bharrat Jagdeo in the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) Appeal case Bharrat Jagdeo v. AG & Others in the Trinidad-based court and had actively participated in the proposals for consequential orders to that court – the country’s final appellate court. For that reason, the attorney general argued that Nandlall is fully aware of the orders the CCJ made in the ‘no-confidence appeals.’

“…One of the proposals was for the President and the Cabinet to immediately resign and vacate office, but the CCJ refused to make such an order and clearly outlined that the Cabinet and President remain in office but on a different footing in the nature of a caretaker government,” the attorney general pointed out in his Notice of Application.

He maintained that the issues raised in Nandlall’s FDA have already been ventilated by the CCJ when it handed down a number of consequential orders. The CCJ, in arriving at its decision, had said that Chancellor of the Judiciary, Yonette Cummings-Edwards in citing Hogg, the Canadian constitutional expert, was right to note that, “By convention, the government is expected to behave during this interim period as a caretaker and so restrain the exercise of its legal authority.

It is this caretaker or interim role that explains the three month deadline, in the first instance that the article lays down, in principle, for the holding of the fresh elections.”

Minister Williams said the CCJ made it clear that Article 106 (7) also creates an avenue for the constitutional players to extend the time for the holding of elections. “The Article goes on to state, among other things, that notwithstanding such resignation, the government shall remain in office and that an election shall be held ‘within three months, or such longer period as the National Assembly shall by resolution supported by not less than two-thirds of the votes of all the elected members of the National Assembly determine …’,” he said while quoting the CCJ.

As such, he argued that the claim is an abuse of the process of the court, an affront to the doctrine of stare decisis or rule of precedent. The court, he submitted, should not grant the orders prayed for because such an action would require the High Court to make orders which the CCJ, the country’s highest court, has already ruled on.

“The court is being asked to adjudicate on an issue that the final Court, the CCJ, has pronounced upon, and, as a consequence, the point is moot and clearly academic and a wanton abuse of the process of this Honourable Court,” the attorney general told the acting chief justice. Both the FDA and the NOA will come up before the Acting Chief Justice, George-Wiltshire, on Monday September 9, 2019 in the High Court.