Deputy Deeds Registrar Zanna Frank has moved to the High Court to fight directions given by Attorney-General (AG) Basil Williams that have prevented her from performing her duties, while he claimed yesterday that she did not meet the criteria for the position and was being used as a pawn.
Apparent efforts by Williams to block the decision by the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) to appoint Frank, including his appointment of Penelope Whyte as acting Deputy Registrar although she is not an attorney, also attracted an accusation of “political interference” yesterday.
“It would seem that there was political interference in the system…we were forced to come here to seek the protection of the law,” Frank’s lawyer, Senior Counsel Bernard De Santos said in his address during a hearing before Justice Brassington Reynolds, who eventually granted eight orders based on the application. De Santos said that Frank’s situation was a clear case of “how government sometimes can go miserably wrong.”