Anil Nandlall, the attorney for Christopher Ram, who had filed a court challenge to the ongoing house-to-house registration process, yesterday said that he would not appeal the ruling by acting Chief Justice Roxane George-Wiltshire that the exercise is lawful.
Following Wednesday’s ruling at the High Court, Nandlall had announced that he would appeal.
However, in a statement issued yesterday, he said that after a “more mature consideration” of the decision and after conferring with Ram and other counsel involved, including Senior Counsel, there would be no appeal.
He, however, noted they may reconsider the position should appeals be filed by the other parties in the proceedings.
By way of a fixed date application, Ram’s attorneys had asked the court to declare that the registration exercise is in violation of the letter and spirit of the Constitution and the judgment and consequential orders made by the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) in the consolidated cases stemming from the passage of a no-confidence motion against government last December.
The acting Chief Justice, however, ruled that the house-to-house registration is not unconstitutional and also that it is not for the court to determine if it should be conducted but it is for the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to decide this while acting in line with the Constitution.
Nandlall’s statement yesterday noted that the judge also ruled, among other things, that the removal of the names of persons already registered from the National Register of Registrants (NRR) on the ground of non-residency is unlawful; that names can only be removed from the NRR in accordance with the National Registration Act (for example, by death, insanity etc.); and that the scrapping of the existing database of registrants will be illegal.
He further noted that during the course of her ruling, the Chief Justice repeatedly emphasised that the current Official List of Electors (OLE) can be refreshed with a suitable Claims and Objections period and lawfully used for the next elections, but that it is for the GECOM to ultimately determine.
“By these pronouncements alone, the legal proceedings filed by Christopher Ram, achieved its principal objective, that is, to thwart the Government’s grand plan of using the House to House Registration process, as a vehicle to de-register tens of thousands of qualified electors for the next elections, thereby depriving them of their constitutional right to vote,” the statement said.
Nandlall further noted that the judge ruled that her interpretation of the CCJ’s consequential orders is that Article 106 (6) and 106 (7) of the Constitution were triggered when the no-confidence motion was successfully passed on December 21st, 2018 and that therefore the three-month period for the holding of the polls immediately begun to run and expired on March 21st, 2019, as there was no extension by the National Assembly. “The natural corollary therefrom, is that the Government became illegal and unconstitutional on March 22, 2019. From this perspective, we were quite benevolent to the Government by our submissions that the life of the Government will expire on September 18, 2019, unless elections are held on or before that date,” it added.
Nandlall on Wednesday told reporters that he did not consider the ruling a defeat. “I was not defeated. One of the main purposes of the institution of these proceedings was to get the house-to-house registration process reviewed by the court because of the unconstitutionality that it would inevitably result in and that fundamental point was upheld by the court,” he said, while noting that the court would have endorsed their argument that the voters’ list can be refreshed with a suitable claims and objections period.
“The court pointed out very clearly and emphatically that GECOM must now determine which one of the two courses of action it will choose, having regard to the timeframes that are available and that have become exigent upon the passage of a no-confidence motion,” he said.
Nandlall’s party, the opposition PPP, has said that it is satisfied with the ruling and does not plan to appeal.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Basil Williams said that he felt that it was a well-reasoned judgement. “What is very important is that the house-to-house [registration] is not unconstitutional. No date was ever fixed by the CCJ and she [the acting Chief Justice] wouldn’t fix a date either,” Williams said, while adding that there was nothing that the applicant asked for that was successful.
