IT is funny or amusing or mysterious how things creep into the psyche of civilisation and stay there forever, but these things never had the factual existence that civilisation has given them. So, over thousands of years, they have become part of life and are accepted in every corner of the world.

One of the most famous of these fictions that turned into fact concerns the Roman Emperor, Nero. It has been written thousands of years ago that Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned. Nero was not in Rome at the time and while the fire raged, there was no record of him playing the fiddle at the time of the fire.

Perhaps the most used phrase in the modern world attributed to the great English writer Charles Dickens in his book, Oliver Twist, came from an unknown writer who wrote long before Dickens. The term, “the law is an ass” continues to be used widely in law, journalism, and politics, and whenever it is used, Dickens is cited. But it was a playwright named George Chapman in 1654 (Oliver Twist was published in 1837) who used the term in his play, “Revenge for Honour.”
On this day, July 20, in the year 2020 in Guyana, it would have been appropriate to refer to the law as an ass for the court to accept to hear a writ from a woman named Misenga Jones who wanted the courts to order GECOM to accept the declaration of the Chief Election Officer instead of the CARICOM supervised recount which was already settled by the Caribbean Court of Appeal.

Before we explain the attempt by Misenga Jones to become Indiana Jones, let’s look at a hypothetical case. John White rides his bulldozer in the National Park. The authority stopped him through a ruling from the High Court. He appeals. He loses the appeal in which the court ordered that no bulldozer can be used in the public facility. He goes to the apex court in Guyana, the CCJ. He lost there. The legal position then is that no one can use a bulldozer in the National Park.
The rule of law becomes questionable if Mary Smith files an identical writ and the court entertains her. Mary tells the court that John White filed his writ and she is not John White, she is Mary Smith, so she is filing under Mary Smith. The court throws out her case. Then Joan Edwards files an identical writ, arguing that she is not John White or Mary Smith but Joan Edwards.

The court should not entertain Mary Smith and Joan Edwards because a lower court cannot reverse the findings of the apex court. The ultimate decision in a country, or any country for that matter, is from the final court of appeal, which I refer to here as the apex court. What Mary Smith and Joan Edwards did is a mockery of the rule of law.

What I have presented here is a hypothetical example. In Guyana, this actually happened on this very day, in March 2020. A lady by the name of Misenga Jones filed a writ that was heard on this very day by the Chief Justice. Jones wanted the court to order GECOM to accept the results of the ten regions, which she said constituted the official declaration of the Chief Election Officer.
Jones asked for the intervention from the lower court to accept the CEO’s declaration when Guyana’s final appeals court, the CCJ, on July 8, had ordered that there should be an open, transparent, and accountable recount. In giving her decision, the Chief Justice said that the issue was res judicata—already settled. The Chief Justice went on to add that persons cannot be permitted to engage the court using multiple applications surrounding the same issue and shield themselves behind the claim that they were not in the previous proceedings.

This moment in the struggle for a free and fair election between March and July 2020 has faded from our memory, but I have written about it today because it constituted one of the most dangerous episodes in Guyana’s jurisprudence. A country’s jurisprudence is open to ridicule when a litigant wants a lower court to reverse the decision of the country’s final court. It is not only ridicule that would be involved, but the actual demise of the rule of law.

It becomes shambolic and unreal that a lower court could overrule a higher court. But that is exactly what Misenga Jones tried to do on this day in 2020. She did not succeed. She became a failed Indiana Jones because Guyana’s jurisprudence rejected the masquerade. One hopes this never happens in Guyana again.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.