A report date has been set in the challenge to the sales of plots at Pradoville 1 and Pradoville 2.
Acting Chief Justice Ian Chang, who is hearing the matter in chambers at the High Court, in Georgetown, has scheduled October 22nd for reports.
The case was first heard on Wednesday before Justice Chang.
A group headed by former APNU Member of Parliament Desmond Trotman has moved to the High Court seeking, among other things, to have the sales of plots at Pradoville 1 and Pradoville 2 declared null and void on the claim that the sales were done surreptitiously at undervalued prices to former government ministers, officials and cronies of the PPP/C.
Trotman and the Committee for the Defence for the Constitution Inc had their lawyers, Senior Counsel Rex McKay and Neil Boston, Bettina Glasford and Brenden Glasford, file the action seeking ten declarations.
The applicants want the court to set aside the “purported sale and transfer to the putative owners” of the said parcels of land and an order directing each owner that the legal and beneficial ownership of the lands vest in the Minister of Finance.
Number five of the ten listed declarations being sought seeks to have the court find that the parcels of land in the two areas—officially known as Plantation Sparendaam and Plantation Goedverwagting—were sold without “recourse to a valuation tender procedure or an invitation to the public that such lands are for sale [and] is a wrongful and unlawful grant of facilities and benefits….” Trotman and his group are also want the court to find that the sale was a brazen and flagrant infringement of their and citizens’ right to equality before the law in violation of Article 149D of the Constitution.
The Attorney General’s Chambers is listed as the respondent to the action filed.
The two plot of lands have courted controversy for years as there was no clear policy regards their sale, the parcels were sold at very low prices and it was only persons in the former PPP/C government or those close to the government along with a few public officials who were granted plots. Former president Bharrat Jagdeo has built a mansion on the Sparendaam plot which in 2011 came under public criticism when former head of the presidential secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon had listed several persons who would have been offered land in that area.
According to the court documents, sometime in 2010 Jagdeo and his cabinet ministers “covertly conceived clandestinely to develop without parliamentary knowledge or approval, two pieces of lands….”
The documents said no money was authorised by Parliament for the development of the project, which was done through the wrongful and unlawful authorisation of former Minister of Finance Dr Ashni Singh through the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited.
It pointed out also that no advertisement was made by the government as vendor in the print or electronic media in Guyana informing the public that the parcels of lands were for sale. The sale and transfer of the titles, according to the group, was a brazen abuse of power in contravention of Articles 149 and 149D of the Constitution and in breach of the rule of law and equality before the law.
