Dear Editor,
The Berbice Bar Association condemns in the strongest possible terms the unwarranted and unjustifiable attack by the Attorney General and the Guyana Chronicle on the Chancellor and the judiciary.
This association accepts what was articulated in the letter published in your newspaper by Mr Mursaline Bacchus, Attorney-at-Law where he gave a comprehensive history of the appeal filed by the Attorney General against the ruling of Justice Navindra Singh, quashing the charge against former President Bharrat Jagdeo (‘A blunder by the law officers of the state should not be shifted onto the court or any member of the court’ SN, January 24).
It has been observed by this association that no one, including the law officers of the state, has disputed the factual matrix presented by Mr Bacchus in that letter. Therefore it is of grave concern to us that neither the Guyana Bar Association nor the Guyana Association of Women Lawyers has seen it fit to make a statement critical of the Attorney General and the Guyana Chronicle’s attack on the independence of the Judiciary and the integrity of its highest judge. By their silence those associations give the appearance of condoning the attacks.
We remind those associations that an attack on the judiciary is by extension an attack on the entire Bar, since all members of the judiciary came from the Bar. Not even in the days of ‘paramountcy of the party’ when a certain flag flew over the Court of Appeal, did anyone attack the judiciary in this manner.
We also condemn the Prime Minister, who holds responsibility for the Guyana Chronicle, for not in any way disciplining the editors of the Guyana Chronicle or at least making a public statement shaming them.
Perhaps the time is ripe for that august body, the judiciary, to move to the court in contempt proceedings against those responsible including the editors of the Guyana Chronicle.
We have looked at the official court records and are convinced, as any sober person would be, that the filing of the appeal with the Attorney General as “Appellant”, was a legal blunder and that unlawful act could not have been salvaged legally.
We also condemn the attempt in the Chronicle article to suggest that the decision was that of the Chancellor alone when in fact it was the decision of the full court ‒ the Chancellor, Justice of Appeal Roy and additional judge Madam Dawn Gregory.
It has been noted by us that the Attorney General has been reported as saying: “We will take the case to the Caribbean Court of Justice .” We wish to remind him that an appeal to the Caribbean Court of Justice requires leave from the Court of Appeal or the Caribbean Court of Justice itself, and that for such leave to be granted the burden would be on the Attorney General to show that the intended appeal has merit. We doubt very much that the intended appeal would have any merit inasmuch as the Court of Appeal was correct to dismiss the appeal.
Yours faithfully,
Adrian Anamayah
For Berbice Bar Association
