The Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) has notified parties in the challenge to the decision of the Court of Appeal to uphold the appointment of Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Chairman James Patterson that a case management conference is due to be held on Friday.
According to a notice issued by the CCJ Deputy Registrar and Marshal, the conference is set for March 29, via video conference.
The conference is being convened to give directions regarding the application filed last month by the appellant, PPP executive Secretary Zulfikar Mustapha, for the appeal to be treated as urgent and to determine the orders that are necessary, and the timelines for filing submissions and other documents for the progress of the case.
Handing down its ruling in October last year, the local appellate court upheld the legality of President David Granger’s unilateral appointment of Patterson, a retired judge, as Chairman of GECOM, saying that he did not act unreasonably in doing so. The court disagreed with arguments advanced by Mustapha’s attorney that President Granger’s resort to the constitutional proviso in Article 161 (2) for the unilateral appointment of Patterson was unlawfully invoked and resultantly dismissed his appeal of a previous ruling of acting Chief Justice Roxane George-Wiltshire SC.
In his affidavit supporting his application to the CCJ, Mustapha said that the issues which have arisen in the case are of great general, public and constitutional importance, in as much as they concern the appointment of the chairman of GECOM, which he says is the exclusive constitutional authority responsible for administering and presiding over national elections.
Mustapha is also arguing that the decision of the Guyana Court of Appeal failed to give effect to the “letter and spirit” of the constitutional amendments and is, therefore, “hopelessly misconceived and woefully erroneous in law.”
