THE recent exchange of words between Attorney-General Anil Nandlall and Alliance For Change Leader Nigel Hughes regarding the former’s interaction with the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) makes for a timely political grandstanding vs constitutional reality case study.

While Hughes tried to paint a picture of undue influence, Minister Nandlall’s response was less a defence, but rather an obligatory explanation of the Attorney General’s multi-tasking function within the Guyanese state apparatus.

It is strange that an experienced lawyer like Hughes would seemingly confuse the function of providing legal opinions with that of a steadfast legal adviser, but such seeming confusion has a specific political agenda.

As the state’s chief legal officer, the Attorney General represents the Guyana state by default and serves as the government’s prime legal advisor. In its general function, it has been an accepted historical practice that numerous state institutions, including independent constitutional agencies like GECOM, obtain legal opinions on complex legislative matters.

This is in effect different from the Attorney General serving as GECOM’s permanent legal advisor. The distinction, as properly noted by Nandlall, is one of nuance: one gives neutral legal opinion on specific aspects of the law when requested, while the other implies an ongoing, attorney-client relationship.

To suggest that giving a legal opinion ipso facto sullies the independence of the requesting entity misreads both legal ethics and ordinary governance.

Indeed, the Attorney General’s own recollection of events during the period between 2015-2020, when even government-nominated GECOM commissioners were seeking advice to the then-Attorney General’s Chambers, attests to the hypocrisy in Hughes’s complaint today.

This recent precedent decisively disavows that such exchanges are novel or signs of posturing on the part of partisans. It confirms that seeking the government’s highest legal understanding from the state’s greatest legal mind is the natural and reasonable next step for agencies dealing with highly complex legislative overhauls, particularly those concerning electoral integrity.

For GECOM, an agency often under intense observation, access to the Attorney General’s legal opinion is a strength and not a weakness. With recent amendments to such crucial electoral legislation as the National Registration Act and the Representation of the People Act, certainty and consistency in interpretation of the law are necessary for ensuring free and transparent elections.

Leaving it to GECOM to navigate complex legal landscapes with no exposure to the country’s best legal brain is not only unrealistic but risks producing incoherent applications of the law at the cost of the very electoral process that these critics purport to seek to protect.

In the end, Hughes’s accusation is less about caring about GECOM’s autonomy and more about making political noise.

Such display of public rhetoric risks compromising public trust in such state institutions as legislatures by evoking gratuitous controversies about legally legitimate processes.

Guyana requires a political discourse that endeavors to promote comprehension and respect for constitutional operations, not one that compromises into facile misreadings in order to secure short-term politics. The Attorney General’s role in providing legal clarity, where called upon by state institutions, is part of good governance, not a tool of political meddling.