The Office of the Attorney General will be utilising the Law Revision Commission, established under the Inter-American Development Bank Modernisation of Justice Administration Project, to correct the various omissions in the Revised Laws of Guyana.
Attorney General Anil Nandlall told Stabroek News on Sunday that the “deficiencies we are in the process of correcting. These problems have arisen because there was a lapse in revision for the last 40 years”. He said that the omissions cited by analyst Christopher Ram on a recent blog, had already been identified by the technical team at the commission and corrective measures were underway.
Nandlall said that since the commission was established under the justice improvement project the commission has liaised with the law revision centre of the Eastern Caribbean which serves to assist in law revision for most of the Caricom countries.
He said that “law revision is a work in progress and…, part of that complement of the IDB- funded project was to specifically establish the commission as well as training of the technical staff.” Nandlall said that prior to the revised Laws of Guyana, which were presented in March, there was no single source to locate all of the laws to compile and revise. He stated that the process was long, tedious and expensive and that “no one was expecting a perfect revision, it is a work in progress.”
He stated that “obviously the final product is not perfect… those who undertook the exercise encountered tremendous difficulties in locating the different pieces of legislation that were passed within the 30-40 years.”
The Attorney General said that “from the time those revised laws came into circulation I said that at the time this was a Herculean task undertaken that sought to bring up to date 40 years of law revision. There are deficiencies and I have identified them.” He noted that the next step was to simultaneously review the revisions and begin the process of revising laws from December 2010 to present.
Nandlall stated that the process was one inherited by his predecessor, Charles Ramson and first began under Doodnauth Singh. He stated that it would have been unrealistic to suggest that revision of laws spanning 1977-2010 would be perfect and that the criticisms didn’t take into account the magnitude of the workload.
“I should be congratulated for completing this task,” he said adding that analysts and critics are free to give their opinions however they are not part of the actual revision process and therefore are not confronted with the level of challenges that manifested during the process.
Ram had heavily criticized the revision of the laws over the omission of subsidiary legislation under the Law Revision Act. Most notably Ram argued that the Law Commission apparently did not think it necessary to include the not inconsiderable list of the omitted subsidiary legislation which apply until the new subsidiary legislation is published.
He said that under Section 8 of the Law Revision Act, two sets of laws may be omitted. The first set relates to a) any Appropriation or Supplementary Appropriation Act; b) any applied law; and c) any subsidiary legislation which the Commission thinks fit to omit. The second set of laws pertain to d) any loan Act or loan guarantee Act; e) any Act of the temporary nature which can, in the opinion of the Commission, be conveniently omitted; and f) any act authorised by order of the President to be omitted from the laws.
The Attorney General maintained that the tedious nature of the process and the vastness of the documentation necessary may have led to mistaken omissions, but once again restated that the process will be corrected by the commission.
For his part, Ram argued that the revised laws not only omitted items that would enable all users, including judges, magistrates and court officials, legal practitioners and the public to have a complete picture of the current laws of the country, which does not exist, but also failed to document some important legislation.
He noted that the National Accreditation Council Act of 2004 is still not present in the current consolidated Laws of Guyana which he stated, meant the council would continue to operate within the framework of a non-existent law. Pointing to the age of some these problems, Ram noted that similarly, “the Amerindian Act passed in the year 2006 was being administered for more than four years before it was brought into force, and only after this omission had been drawn to the Government’s attention.”
Critical of the commission itself, Ram had stated that “No legal system can function properly if the laws as published are inaccurate, incomplete and unreliable. The laws of the country are those enacted by the Parliament.
The (Law Review) Commission has no power to make any laws, either by omission or commission, no pun intended. Its only real function is to ensure that those laws are faithfully and conveniently reproduced and published.”
Both men agreed that the current price of the volumes at $825,000 was a considerable investment. Ram said that since the revision was incomplete this cost was onerous. The Attorney General noted that it was his hope the exercise would have been a cost recovery project. He had expressed his disappointment earlier in the year when it was revealed that many lawyers were pirating the reports as opposed to purchasing.
