The government has amended its supporting affidavit in its High Court application to restore the funds cut from the national budget, while lawyers for Opposition Leader David Granger yesterday asked for more time to reply to submissions made by the Attorney General and his team.
After the in-chamber hearing presided over by acting Chief Justice Ian Chang had ended, Granger’s lawyer Basil Williams said that Attorney General Anil Nandlall and his team continued their submissions in relation to their arguments that the court ought to direct the Finance Minister to make withdrawals from the Contingency Fund.
On June 4, the government through Nandlall filed the ex-parte application, asking the court to grant an order vacating and/or setting aside the budget reduction as well as an interim order to allow Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh to make advances from the Contingencies Fund to restore the original allocations for the agencies affected by the cuts.
Williams, one of the lawyers representing Granger in the court action, said government has amended its affidavit in support of the motion to include the Consolidated Fund. “I believe they have done that because they recognise the limitations of the Contingency Fund, which has certain criteria that they must satisfy, one of which is urgency. And they couldn’t satisfy that, so they have added Consolidated Fund also,” he explained.
The attorney noted that the point raised by Trinidad-based Senior Counsel Seenath Jairam on behalf of the government that the opposition is denying separation of power is untrue.
“We in fact are relying on the separation of powers”, he explained. “That is why we believe to make an interim order at this stage would be tantamount to hijacking the powers of the National Assembly; that is, the court hijacking the powers of the National Assembly. And we are saying that that cannot be done at this stage”, he explained.
Williams added that following yesterday’s arguments, he asked for an adjournment to respond to the submissions made. “The adjournment came on a natural course and we will address those arguments because the Guyana Parliament is based on the Westminster model and our system came from the British and those parliaments at all material times had the ability to reduce and cut budget(s). Our parliament also has that power and that is what we are trying to say,” he added.
The case has been adjourned until next Tuesday.
Delay
Meanwhile, Nandlall accused Granger’s lawyers of deliberately asking for an adjournment in order to prolong the case.
He told Stabroek News that at an earlier hearing, lawyers for Granger and the other defendant, Speaker Raphael Trotman, asked for the date to reply. He said that when the case was called on Tuesday, Trotman’s attorneys, Khemraj Ramjattan and Roysdale Forde, made submissions while attorney Llewellyn John was the only member of Granger’s legal team present.
Nandlall added that when the case was called yesterday, the other lawyers representing Granger turned up “completely unprepared to make their submissions.”
“Three weeks was granted (in June) and they came this morning to ask for three more weeks,” Nandlall said. “This is a clear ploy on the part of APNU’s legal team to delay and frustrate these proceedings. On the one hand, they are contending in and out of court that the case is misconceived and weak and at the same time they are unable to present arguments in the timeframe they ask for. They keep seeking adjournments to prevent arguments,” he added.
Nandlall added that one would have expected that if the case is weak, the lawyers for Granger “ought not to have any difficulties in quickly presenting their arguments… There is a clear attempt to delay, perhaps because they have no answer.”
He accused the lawyers for Granger of stretching out the proceedings, even though they fully know that this will result from a number of persons from various offices being dislocated and various offices and programmes being “shut down.”
The government is seeking to have the court restore over $20B in allocations cut from the National Budget by the combined opposition.
