Following the decision of the Court of Appeal to discharge the order which had suspended certain parts of the Cricket Administration Act (CAA), which essentially paved the way for elections of the Demerara and the Guyana Cricket Boards, Attorney-at-law Arudranauth Gossai yesterday told Stabroek Sport that further action by the Court is needed to initiate the process.
Gossai represents the interest of a number of cricket stakeholders who are eager to resolve the impasse here.
Initially, a stay of proceedings was granted to prevent the Demerara Cricket Board (DCB) from holding its elections and so, the Court of Appeal now has to decide whether to lift that stay.
“Following the lifting of the suspension of the Act, it means that the Demerara Cricket Board can now go ahead and hold an election but when [Justice Navindra Singh] had ordered that election, the [Anand] Sanasie group had applied to the Court of Appeal to stop the elections on the grounds that the Cricket Act was suspended…so I had agreed to the staying of the elections because with the Act being suspended we couldn’t have elections under the Act.
“So, following the lifting of the suspension, Justice Rishi Persaud has to now determine whether he will grant a further stay of the election in light of the Act being no longer suspended….really, we are awaiting a date from the Court of Appeal to lift the stay in relation to the Demerara Cricket Board to hold elections,” the attorney explained. Once that process is completed, attorney Gossai said he is optimistic that elections at the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) will follow, which would bring to an end the dispute regarding the legitimate administrators at that level.
“… Things are going to go forward smoothly; the other side has been filling the press with all kinds of misinformation and neither my clients nor I have been responding to those things. In my mind, what they have been doing in the press is appealing for desperation now because they had been able to manipulate the court and that has ended,” the attorney said. Also of importance is the appointment of a Cricket Ombudsman. The Ombudsman, according to the Cricket Administration Act, is tasked with the responsibility of verifying the legitimacy of the clubs that fall under the aegis of the various county boards, namely Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo, which comprise the Guyana Cricket Board. The focus, in this instance, is primarily using the office of the Ombudsman to create a clear solution to the infraction in Demerara.East Coast, like many of the Sub Committees is fractured as it relates to who the legitimate officer holders are to organise cricket and who will be the officials to vote at any future DCB elections, said Gossai. Guyana is currently without an Ombudsman after High Court Judge Justice Fidela Corbin in February this year quashed the appointment of Stephen Lewis. Lewis was initially appointed as the Cricket Ombudsman in May 2018 by the GCB but his appointment was challenged in the High Court by the Berbice Cricket Board.
However, Lewis, an attorney by profession, was reappointed to the post by the then Minister with responsibility for Sports, Dr. George Norton in March 2019 under section 17 of the Act but his appointment was challenged on the grounds that it was illegal.
