As her attorney had announced, APNU+AFC candidate Ulita Grace Moore will be appealing the Full Court’s decision discharging injections she had previously been granted which had halted preparations for a recount of votes cast at the March 2nd polls.
This newspaper has been reliably informed that a hearing is scheduled for 10 this morning before the Guyana Court of Appeal where Moore, through her attorneys, will be seeking leave to appeal.
A motion to this effect was lodged with the appellate court yesterday.
She is hoping that her application for leave to appeal will be treated as the hearing of the appeal itself.
On Tuesday, acting Chief Justice Roxane George-Wiltshire SC and Justice Nareshwar Harnanan discharged injunctions which had been granted to Moore, effectively paving the way for the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to commence the recount.
Delivering the judgment, the Chief Justice said that Moore’s challenge could only have been brought in an elections petition as opposed to an application for judicial review. As a result, the court threw out her case and discharged the injunctions she had been granted by Justice Franklyn Holder which halted the recount.
Signaling his intention to appeal following the ruling, her attorney Mayo Robertson asked the Full Court to stay its decision pending the outcome of his client’s appeal to the Court of Appeal.
The Full Court judges, however, rejected his request, stating that there was nothing indicating that the appeal had any merit or real prospect of success.
Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo had challenged Justice Holder’s jurisdiction to hear the matter. He had argued through his attorneys that Section 140 of the Representation of the People Act prohibits the High Court from inquiring into any decision or acts by the Commission other than by way of an elections petition.
Moore, in her application for judicial review, had contended that GECOM could not order a recount based on an Aide Memoire signed by President David Granger and Jagdeo.
President Granger had contacted CARICOM’s Chair, Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley, and agreed for a recount to be done following controversy over the tabulation of the votes cast for Region Four, which opposition parties as well as international and many local observers say was not done in a transparent and credible manner.
An independent high-level team from CARICOM had then traveled to Guyana to supervise the recount, however this was aborted after Moore filed her application and was granted an injunction against the recount.
The opposition PPP/C’s position has been that Returning Officer (RO) for Electoral District Four, Clairmont Mingo did not, as required by law, use the statements of poll (SOPs) to tabulate the results he eventually declared.
Since Tuesday’s Full Court ruling, Jagdeo’s attorney Anil Nandlall has condemned an apparent GECOM decision that it needed yesterday to first study the court’s ruling, thus postponing to today, a meeting initially scheduled for 10 yesterday morning.
He asked what was there to study in the straightforward decision and called on GECOM Chair retired Justice Claudette Singh to act decisively. Singh had previously given to the Chief Justice an undertaking that a recount would be done.
In an affidavit dated March 20th, she had given an undertaking following a ruling delivered by Justice George-Wiltshire that should there be discrepancies in the SOPs called by Mingo with those held by political parties, then such discrepancies would be noted at the end of the process if they could not be addressed then, and she would endeavour to facilitate a recount at the level of the Commission.
