Director General of the Ministry of the Presidency Joseph Harmon disclosed yesterday that government funded the trip of six ministers for the hearing of the no-confidence case before the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) in Trinidad.
“They were there based on a decision of Cabinet after a long and careful deliberation of the issues related to the matter at the CCJ,” Harmon told a post-Cabinet press briefing. He was asked if the ministers attended court in an official capacity and at whose expense.
Based on media reports, Indigenous Peoples’ Affairs Minister Sydney Allicock, Public Service Minister Tabitha Sarabo-Halley, Social Cohesion Minister Dr George Norton, Education Minister Nicolette Henry, Business Minister Haimraj Rajkumar, and Communities Minister Ronald Bulkan, attended the sessions. Stabroek News was told yesterday that aside from Bulkan, the other ministers were present in court on both days. Bulkan was seen in court on day two.
Harmon told reporters that government funded the trip of those ministers. He said that they “represented their party to the CCJ, that is, the government. The government of course will have the legal attorneys who are presenting their case.”
He said that very often in a courtroom, a judge who is dealing with a matter, will look at various things including the party’s interest in the proceedings.
“If they don’t appear and if they appear and so on. So those were representatives of the government. That’s what they were doing,” he stressed.
Chartered accountant Christopher Ram, in a letter to the newspaper, had questioned the purpose of the ministers’ presence saying that their trip was a waste of taxpayers’ money.
Accompanying the ministers, he said, was attorney Darren Wade, who was not part of the legal team of local and foreign lawyers representing the Government and the Guyana Elections Commission.
“There is no apparent reason for any of the ministers or Mr Wade to be in Trinidad as a spectator of court proceedings that were livestreamed and could have been accessible from any place in Guyana. One suggestion was a show of force to the Court or moral support for the Attorney General (AG), hardly a justification for their presence,” Ram said in the letter, which was published in the May 10th edition of this newspaper.
“What is particularly troubling is not only that their trip to Trinidad would have been financed at taxpayers’ expense but that the decision to take them away from their ministries could only have been made by the Cabinet led by the President. Responsible government requires that taxpayers’ money is properly spent and fully accounted for,” he added.
