Acting Chief Justice Ian Chang yesterday announc-ed that he will give a ruling on the court’s jurisdiction to hear the opposition PPP/C’s challenge to APNU+AFC technocrat ministers Winston Felix and Keith Scott sitting in the National Assembly.
Notices will be prepared and sent by the court informing of the next court date when the decision has been reached.
The announcement was made after Attorney General (AG) Basil Williams and former AG Anil Nandlall concluded their preliminary arguments in the matter.
In the motion filed by Nandlall, PPP member Desmond Morian is seeking a declaration that Felix and Scott are not lawful members of the National Assembly and an order that they be prevented from sitting in the Assembly unless their names are extracted from the coalition’s list.
Felix, the Minister of Citizenship, and Scott, Minister in the Ministry of Communities, are sitting in the National Assembly as technocrat members of the Assembly, which the opposition contends is improper.
Williams yesterday maintained his contention that the High Court has no jurisdiction to hear the matter, which was filed by motion and not via an election petition.
The AG has argued that the court has no jurisdiction to proceed with Nandlall’s application since it has not come by way of an election petition, but rather by a motion, which the court has no jurisdiction to hear.
He reemphasised his position that the opposition’s application for redress on the issue by way of a motion before the court is an affront to strict statutory provisions, which he says clearly provide for such matters to be ventilated via an election petition.
At the commencement of arguments last Wednesday, Williams had stated that since the matter is one which touches and concerns Felix and Scott as elected members of the National Assembly and the PPP’s contention of their validity as sitting members of parliament (MPs), then the PPP must move by way of an election petition and not a motion.
Refuting Williams’ position, Nandlall however, argued that the PPP/C’s contention in the instant case has nothing to do with the substantive elections nor the “election” of Felix and Scott as members of the National Assembly, but rather with their “selection” as technocrat ministers.
The former AG said the motion has not challenged the elections nor the election of Felix and Scott as MPs and Nandlall agreed with Williams that if he were so doing, then he would be statutorily confined and would had to have made his application via an election petition and not a motion.
“I am not challenging their election to the National Assembly. They have been properly elected, but wrongly selected to sit as technocratic ministers. This, I think, has eluded my friend. I am challenging the selection and not the election of the two persons,” Nandlall had stated. He submitted, “The error is made when you put them to sit as technocratic members and not as elected members, for which they have been rightly elected.”
The former AG argued that the challenge he has advanced can be brought by motion. Williams, however, contended that Nandlall was questioning the right of Felix and Scott to sit as members of the National Assembly and that insofar as he is questioning that right, the procedure he must adopt is to go to the court’s exclusive jurisdiction as regards matters arising from the elections by way of petition.
Nandlall has, however, advanced that an election petition is a “very narrow and confined process,” in which one can only challenge elections and persons’ election to the National Assembly by way of an election petition.
On June 10th, the first day of the sitting of the 11th Parliament, the PPP/C had called on Clerk of the National Assembly Sherlock Isaacs to not have the oath administered to them as their presence as technocrats violated several principles of the constitution.
The AG and the Speaker of the National Assembly have been named as respondents in this matter.
