Dear Editor,
At the risk of public castigation by some uninformed contributors to the letter columns of the media mainly because of their inadequate exposure to conventional learning, permit me to address the issue of fraud as it relates to the Declaration made by Region 4 Returning Officer, C. Mingo. It appears that the postulate recently embraced by some, including some of the Media Corps, is that the CJ (ag) did not find expressly that any fraud was committed by him when he used a self-generated spreadsheet and not the SOPs, as required by the Law.
Firstly, the CJ (ag) specifically declared that his use of the spreadsheet was unlawful, null and void. Secondly, she ordered him to tabulate the votes by reference to the SOPs as provided for by the Law. Thirdly, there was nothing to indicate from her judgment that Mingo did not commit acts of fraud.
However, to constitute a fraud in Law his acts must have been intended, in fact or by reasonable inference, to deceive anyone affected by the result of his actions. Fraud is a legal concept and the Law is not an esoteric enigma but “an operational art in society”. It is unquestionable that “an inference to be reasonable, must rest upon some logical foundation …” and evidentiarily can be culled from “… a perception of the concatenation of all events and circumstances …”
Let us consider an actual case decided by our Court of Appeal about 4 decades ago. An alien, (X) arrives at Lethem, presents a passport validly issued to Y with his (X’s) picture superimposed therein and is permitted by the immigration officer to enter Guyana as a legal immigrant. Whilst still in Guyana this deceitful act of X is discovered, he is arrested by the police and deemed a prohibited immigrant by the Chief Immigration Officer, with a view to his deportation. Our Court of Appeal declared that his deceitful act in presenting a false passport, i.e., one not lawfully issued to him, was a “fraudulent” act, and was therefore unlawful, null and void from the moment he did so and not when it was discovered. The only reasonable inference was that, by his deceitful act, he intended to obtain a permit from the immigration officer to enter Guyana and this was unlawful. This conclusion was irresistibly categorized by the CA as “fraudulent”, and therefore his detention was lawful.
This analogical reference is supportive of the deductive process used to draw the conclusion that Mingo’s conduct was fraudulent. His “unlawful, null and void” tabulation was not epideictic but calculated to alter, by reduction, the electoral strength of the PPP/C and simultaneously, increased the votes of the APNU+AFC, by a deliberate use of an extra-legal generated spreadsheet, notwithstanding the known process of use of the SOPs. In finding that his act was “unlawful, null and void” the learned CJ (ag) had no doubt concluded that his declaration, concocted by this unlawful means, constituted a fraudulent exercise of his statutory power, in the same manner that the CA found that the alien’s conduct was fraudulent. As a former Justice of Appeal, it is fair to say that this is a self-evident juristic inference, without relying on rocket science.
Thus, to avoid confusion in the public domain, statements ought to be made after careful consideration, lest they feed the very inaccuracies they were intended to prevent. Sometimes, silence may be not only golden but the better option.
Yours sincerely,
Justice Charles R. Ramson SC
OR Former Attorney General
and Minister of Legal Affairs
and Justice of Appeal
