THE Court of Appeal, on October 15, will hear government’s application for an early hearing of the partial challenge to the High Court’s decision that blocks GECOM from removing persons from the National Register of Registrants Database, and eliminates residency as a requirement to be on Official List of Electors.
Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Basil Williams, made the disclosure on Friday during a press conference held by the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) at Congress Place, Sophia. The respondents in the case are Christopher Ram, the Chief Elections Officer, the Commissioner of National Registration and Guyana Elections Commission.
The hearing of the application will take place even as the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) intensifies preparations for the much-anticipated General and Regional Elections in March 2020. Such preparations include the merging of the data gathered from the recently-concluded house-to-house registration, with the National Register of Registrants Database. Initially, the Elections Secretariat had intended to generate a new register from the data gathered during the house-to-house registration but the High Court, while ruling that the national registration exercise was legitimate, said that it would be unconstitutional to remove persons from the National Register of Registrants unless deceased or disqualified pursuant to Article 159 (3) and (4). This resulted in the Elections Commission taking a decision to merge the data from the national registration exercise with the National
Register of Registrants Database in its attempts to facilitate early elections.
The attorney general, in appealing in part the decision of the High Court, has also asked for an interim stay of execution of part of the judgment handed down by the Chief Justice (ag) Roxane George-Wiltshire on August 14, 2019 until the Fixed Date Application (FDA) is completely heard and a determination is made.
“We applied for a stay. The stay would normally go to a single Judge in chambers and if it’s not successful you could then go to the full bench for a review of the decision of the judge in chambers. But, of course you know, when that case started the Court of Appeal had just gone into recess and so nothing could have happened until the court is now back on course,” Minister Williams told reporters.
Should this prove unsuccessful for the government, it will pursue other legal options. “In these cases, as you know, since the first instance approach in the no-confidence motion, the courts haven’t been granting any stays. Instead, what they’re doing is trying to hear the matter expeditiously,” he explained.
In his FDA filed in late August, Minister Williams laid out 16 grounds on which the Chief Justice (ag) erred in her ruling on the national registration process.
In setting out the grounds for the appeal, he told the appellate court that the learned trial judge erred and was misconceived in law when she ruled that Article 159 (5) of the Constitution which addressed ‘the qualifying date’ is only applicable to persons 14 years or older for the purpose of registration as at October 31, and not all Guyanese citizens.
According to him, the Chief Justice (ag) failed to apply any cannons of interpretation in arriving at her decision, adding that the matter was already fully ventilated and argued before the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), and as such, was therefore Res Judicata.
In her judgment, Justice George-Wiltshire also ruled that residency, in the case of Guyanese, was not a requirement under the laws but the attorney general, in his application, contented that Chief Justice again erred.
“The learned trial judge erred and was misconceived in law in finding that there is no law or laws in Guyana which set out additional requirements more particularly residence for purposes of Article 159 (2) (c) of the Constitution by failing to properly address her mind to section 6 of the National Registration Act, Chapter 19:08 Laws of Guyana; the learned trial judge erred and was misconceived in law in failing to properly construe section 6 of the National Registration Act, Chapter 19:08 Laws of Guyana in order to find that residency is a requirement of the Act for purposes of registration during the period of the ‘qualifying date,’” the attorney general contended.
He, therefore, suggested to the appellate court that it would not be unconstitutional to remove persons from the list who had previously been on the list but was not registered during the house-to-house registration period because of non-residency in Guyana.
Added to that, the attorney general alleged that the learned trial judge breached the separation of powers doctrine, contending that the Parliament clearly provided, in section 6 of the National Registration Act, Chapter 19:08 Laws of Guyana, for residency during house-to-house registration.
“The learned trial judge erred and was misconceived in law where from the evidence nothing established that there was a breach of the provisions of the Constitution, the National Registration Act or any other law but the evidence was consistent with the fact that GECOM acted in accordance with Article 159 (2) (c) ,
159 (5) and 162 of the Constitution of Guyana; the learned trial judge erred and was misconceived in law in when she breached the separation of powers doctrine by purporting to issue instructions to GECOM, a Constitutional independent actor, not to remove persons who are presently registered from the current National Register of Registrants (NRR) but who are not registered under new house-to-house registration exercise from the current National Register of Registrants (NRR),” the attorney general submitted to the court.
On those bases, Minister Williams further submitted to the Court of Appeal that Chief Justice George-Wiltshire misdirected herself in law by failing to assess and address the importance and relevance of the provisions of the National Registration (Amendment) Act in the process of compiling a new National Register of Registrants.
