Members of the executive have no business commenting on judicial officials and verdicts in cases, according to Alliance For Change (AFC) leader, Raphael Trotman.
“We [the AFC] don’t believe that the executive should be commenting on individual cases. They may speak sometimes about the sloth in getting certain things effected or we may comment generally….but to single out individual judges or individual judgements is not something the executive ought to be commenting on,” Trotman, who is Minister of Natural Resources, told a press conference yesterday after being asked for the party’s position on Attorney General Basil Williams’ recent comments on the judiciary and outgoing Chancellor (ag) Carl Singh.
Already, Prime Minister and AFC member Moses Nagamootoo has distanced himself from Williams’ comments, in which the AG suggested that the Chancellor was attempting to “free” former president Bharrat Jagdeo of the outstanding cases prior to leaving the bench.
Williams’ comments were published in the Guyana Chronicle, for which Nagamootoo has oversight.
Williams has denied attacking Justice Singh and the judiciary.
Trotman yesterday noted that it is known that there is strict separation of powers between the executive and judicial branches of government.
“It should not be the position of either branch to comment adversely or even positively on the functions of another… the executive ought not to be making mention of what is happening in the judiciary,” he told reporters present at the party’s Kitty headquarters, where he held his first press conference since he was elected leader last Saturday.
Trotman added that the judiciary is not exempt from comment from time to time and some may even criticise. This, he said, has given rise to legal opinions and decisions throughout the Commonwealth.
He made it clear that the party has taken note of the newspaper articles and that the Prime Minister has spoken about the issue.
“You are not going to hear my brother Khemraj [Ramjattan], neither will you hear me commenting on judicial decisions or the happenings in the judiciary and even to the extent of praising them,” he said, while adding that it is not the executive’s function to praise, criticise or castigate the judiciary.
Justice Singh has made it clear that he will demit office on February 23, and not a day before.
“…Not when the Chronicle says I must leave… My constitutional tenure expires on the 23rd of February, 2017, and until such time unless my appointment is revoked, I intend to exercise my functions as a judge,” he recently declared.
Senior Counsel Ralph Ramkarran, who recently criticised the attacks on the judiciary, also cited comments made by Trotman, whom he said “joined the bandwagon and threatened that Cabinet will ‘note’ the Chancellor’s decisions. Minister Trotman twisted the intimidatory knife in an already suppurating wound and to what end ‒ send the message home? Make sure that the Chancellor is officially humiliated by a government official? Let him know that the Cabinet will be noting his behaviour?”
Trotman yesterday did not address Ramkarran’s criticism.
Ramkarran said that neither the Bar nor the judiciary can afford to be silent on the attacks, which he labelled as “unprecedented in their savagery.”
“This open, blatant and shameless intimidation, is not meant only for this Chancellor. It is a message to the next Chancellor and Chief Justice, who will be appointed shortly, and for the entire judiciary, to toe the line. Neither the judiciary, the Bar nor the public can afford to be silent at these alarming developments. If not arrested now, they will only get worse,” he wrote in his weekly Conversation Tree column.
Meanwhile, attorney Jailall Kissoon, in a letter published in yesterday’s edition of the Stabroek News, said that this is the first time in the legal history of this country that an Attorney General had publicly levelled “such a blast of terror and fear upon any Head of the Judiciary or his own legal officer.”
Kissoon, while citing the Guyana Chronicle report in which Williams’ comments were carried, stated that “The fallout from this scurrilous blast has radiated its tremulous fear through the spinal cord of the entire body of the Judiciary in Guyana and elsewhere.”
He added, “Attorneys General such as Dr Fenton Ramsahoye, Sir Shridath Ramphal, Mr Fred Wills, Dr Mohamed Shahabuddin and Mr Keith Massiah have been betrayed by the current Attorney General, Mr Basil Williams, SC through libel, slander and contempt. It will take a new generation of lawyers to restore the pristine glory of these great chambers.”
