The Court of Appeal will be unable to sit as one of its permanent members retired last week and another judge is scheduled to proceed on pre-retirement leave later this week, according to PPP/C Shadow Legal Affairs Minister Anil Nandlall, who says the situation is a cause for concern as there are hundreds of cases that are still to be heard.
Chancellor (ag) Carl Singh retired on February 23 and Nandlall said that he has been informed that from this week, Justice of Appeal BS Roy is scheduled to proceed on pre-retirement leave.
He stressed that Court of Appeal requires at least three judges at any given time, including the Chancellor. “It has been functioning over the last year with only two [permanent] judges—Singh and Roy—and, therefore, every time that court sits, it borrows a judge [the acting Chief Justice] from the High Court, throwing the High Court’s agenda and work load into disarray,” he told Stabroek News.
Five weeks ago, the Ministry of the Presidency advertised for suitable persons to fill the offices of the Chancellor and the Chief Justice. The closing date for applications was January 27. There has been no word from government on when the announcement of the successful candidates will be made.
Nandlall noted that the Court of Appeal is one of the fundamental links in the chain of Guyana’s judicial structure as it is the court to which all decisions from the High Court and the Full Court are appealed to, along with all indictable offences tried in the Magistrates’ Courts and also all criminal trials done in the High Court. He explained that if an accused person is convicted in one of the lower courts and an appeal is filed against that conviction, it is the Court of Appeal to which bail applications are to be made for such a person. It is also the Court of Appeal that is required to give leave for every person who wishes to appeal to the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ). “In short, the Court of Appeal is an indispensable rung in the judicial ladder,” he stressed.
He said that having such an important court not functioning will be “a fundamental blow to the administration of justice in Guyana,” particularly given that the justice system is already overburdened.
“You can only imagine what will happen when one of the key courts stops functioning. I do not ever recall such a state of affairs existing since independence,” he said.
For Nandlall, President David Granger’s delay in confirming judicial nominees that were submitted to him last year is to blame for the situation. “The president must accept full responsibility for this chaotic situation. I am aware that since May last year recommendations were made…by the JSC [Judicial Service Commission] to make a number of appointments of judges to both the Court of Appeal and the High Court,” he said.
He recalled both himself and Leader of the Opposition Bharrat Jagdeo making several calls for the president to appoint the judges. “To date, the president has refused to do so and now we will have crisis in the judiciary,” Nandlall said.
The JSC had recommended that two High Court judges be elevated to the Court of Appeal and identified candidates to replace them in the High Court. This newspaper was informed that the two judges recommended for the Court of Appeal were very experienced and have performed satisfactorily during their time on the bench.
When asked about this matter in January this year, Granger confirmed that he was in possession of a list of judicial nominees to fill four positions and said that an announcement would be made when the time is right. “I am considering the list which I have before me and in due course the announcement will be made,” Granger said. Asked how long before the announcement would be made, he responded, “Well as long as it takes.”
Nandlall had severely criticized the delay and had signaled his intention to file a constitutional motion if the nominees were not appointed within reasonable time. He had advanced this position more than two months ago.
It was the opposition PPP/C that first highlighted the president’s failure to act on the list of nominees.
Nandlall yesterday expressed certainty that with the appointments, the Court of Appeal would be in a position to function. “Significantly, had the appointments been made in a timely manner …by this time around a second set of appointments could have been made restoring the court to its full complement upon the departure of Justices Singh and Roy,” he said.
A Former Attorney General, Nandlall said that there are hundreds of appeals pending in the system. “It is for precisely this reason that former President Donald Ramotar had increased the quota of High Court judges from 12 to 20 so that senior judges would have been elevated to Court of Appeal to make way for new and additional judges,” he explained, before accusing the current government of not building on the progress made by the previous administration and allowing the judiciary to slip backwards. “All of the progresses made by the PPP in the legal sector are being reversed and this is being replicated in every sector of the country,” he added.
