The Office of the President (OP) yesterday announced that Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs Anil Nandlall and attorney Timothy Jonas will both be appointed Senior Counsel by President Irfaan Ali.
According to a press release from OP, Ali said that he was pleased to announce that after consulting with acting Chancel-lor of the Judiciary, Justice Yonette Cummings-Edwards he made the appointments, thus elevating the two attorneys to silk.
The appointments are to take effect from tomorrow.
According to the release, the elevation of the two is due to their “demonstrable knowledge of and learning in the law and on account of their exemplary erudition and diligence in the practice of the law and by virtue of their distinguished contributions to the growth and development of Guyana’s jurisprudence and constitutional democracy.”
Jonas is currently the litigant in a case where he contends that the president has no authority to make senior counsel appointments.
Contacted last evening following the announcement from the OP, Jonas’ attorney Teni Housty who is representing him in the litigation said that he could not make any comment since the matter is sub judice.
Nandlall who in his capacity as Attorney General is listed as respondent in the matter has, however, expressed a view different from Jonas, advancing that it is the president in whom the power is vested to make such appoints.
Nandlall makes this position clear in a defending affidavit laid before the court.
Earlier this year Jonas filed an application challenging the appointments of his colleagues at the Bar— Stanley Moore, Murseline Bacchus, Roysdale Forde and Jamela Ali who were all appointed senior counsel by former President David Granger.
Jonas’ contention is that the president has no authority to make senior counsel appointments, and so his action having so done is “entirely void and of no effect.”
The lawyers have, however, defended their elevation to silk, arguing that it is the president in whom the power is vested to make such appoints and in whom that power has always resided.
Jonas’ contention is that the president as a member of the executive by making the appointments interferes with a function to be exercised by the judiciary and thus violates Article 122 of the Constitution.
But Forde for one has argued that this position is without merit.
In his submissions, Forde has said that it is factually untrue and legally unsound as argued by Jonas that it is the Full Bench of the High Court which has from time-to-time in the exercise of an inherent jurisdiction, exercised a discretion to confer on lawyers who have practiced with distinction, the dignity of Senior Counsel.
Forde has argued that the court does not have such a jurisdiction and in fact, particularly between 1970 to recent times—2016 to last year, it has been the president who has at all material times been making the appointments.
Countering Jonas’ position, Forde said that it is only after the appointments are made by the president, that the Full Court by convention and practice, judicially recognises the appointment by admitting such attorneys to the Inner Bar—a practice which he said is neither a condition precedent to the appointment by the president nor a necessary consequential act required to give any legal efficacy to the appointments.
It is to be seen whether Jonas would regard his appointment to the status of Senior Counsel by President Ali as being one exercised through the inherent jurisdiction of the Full Bench of the High Court, though the release clearly says that it is by President Ali that the appointments are being made.
Jonas is seeking from the court, an Order of Certiorari directed to the attorney general, the respondent in his action, quashing as wholly void and ultra vires the appointments made by Granger.
The matter is scheduled to be called for arguments before Justice Nareshwar Harnanan on December 14th.
