New Senior Counsel have not been appointed for two decades and the process continues to be frozen, according to the acting Chancellor of the Judiciary Carl Singh.
Currently, the process has been “frozen” until the new APNU+AFC government gives the go ahead, Justice Singh told Stabroek News on Wednesday.
He said, “it is not being considered now. I need an indication from the new government ‘we are ready to do this.’”
Justice Singh said there was currently a list of candidates for preferment but declined to state whether or not the current Attorney-General (AG) Basil Williams or his predecessor Anil Nandlall were among the group being considered.
In May of last year, a notice in the Stabroek News appeared inviting attorneys-at-law desirous of being elevated to Senior Counsel to apply. At the time of the advertisement, observers had been critical of the sudden interest in appointing Senior Counsel after the long gap. It had been suggested that the major impetus was to enable the elevation of Nandlall, who was the first Attorney-General to occupy the office without having Senior Counsel status. Williams is the second appointee to the post to not have been first accorded “silk.”
Nandlall told Stabroek News that he was still of the opinion that Attorneys-General should automatically be accorded the status, considering their portfolios.
He also stated that the appointment process should not be political, while noting that the Chancellor did not need permission to proceed with his work. Nandlall told this newspaper that he believed the Guyana Bar Associa-tion (GBA) needed to be better advocates for the Senior Counsel appointments.
The former AG added that he was of the view that there was a need for new Senior Counsel appointments and pointed out that the last such batch was appointed in 1994. He said that under his tenure the process had once again commenced and he had hoped that the process would have been completed.
“Under my tenure the process was initiated. It should have been done before but better late than never. It should be continued and completed,” he added.
He remained critical of the Bar Association’s role. “Unfortunately, I hold the view that the Bar Association is not advocating impartially and objectively in matters which they should advocate on. It is my respectful view that they have allowed politics, partisan politics to contaminate their postures,” he further said.
Prior to his appointment as the head of the bar association, attorney Christopher Ram had been critical of the process. “I doubt that anyone will suggest that such appointments are even relevant at this stage, or conducive to addressing … problems (facing the profession). But if we have to engage in an exercise about senior counsel let us have an open discussion involving the public whether the distinction has served the public interest or whether it should be abolished altogether,” he said in a post on his blog, chrisram.net.
He has since not been vocal about the process. However, former Bar Association Head Ronald Burch-Smith had told Stabroek New previously that the departure from the norm by requesting applications as opposed to having persons appointed through a recommendation process is a way to remove the politicisation associated with the process in the past.
On October 31, 2014, the GBA had called for Nandlall’s removal as Attorney-General over the content of a telephone conversation he had had with Kaieteur News reporter Leonard Gildarie.
The GBA statement had said in part: “As leader of the Bar, the Attorney General mindful of the honour, dignity and integrity of his office should resign immediately. If he does not resign he should be removed. Any other result would be an endorsement of the Attorney-General’s conduct and an admission by the Executive that the highest moral and legal standards are not applicable to the State.”
That condemnation and similar statements from other parts of society were seen as effectively ending any chance of Nandlall being elevated.
