APNU+AFC Members of Parliament (MPs) Annette Ferguson and Christopher Jones were among a group of persons who were charged on Friday with taking part in a recent illegal procession.
Ferguson, Jones, Mark Griffith, Travis Ellis, Gordon Lucas, Gary Morris, Malcom Ballison and George Halley are jointly charged with the offence, which their attorneys claimed were intended to target the opposition MPs and their supporters.
The charge was read to the MPs and four of their co-accused by Senior Magistrate Leron Daly in a city court.
The charge states that on April 26, between Croal and Regent streets, Georgetown, they took part in a procession without permission of the Chief Officer of police having first been obtained.
Ferguson, Jones, Griffith, Ellis, Lucas and Halley appeared and pleaded not guilty to the charge. A summons was issued by the Magistrate for Morris and Ballison, who were absent from the hearing.
The offence was allegedly committed following the ruling by Chief Justice Roxane George on the APNU+AFC elections petition, which saw some coalition supporters taking to the streets after to protest the decision.
Meanwhile, Ferguson was separately charged with obstructing a peace office on the same date.
They were each granted their release on $20,000 bail on the illegal procession charge, while Ferguson was placed on an additional $10,000 bail for the obstruction charge. The matters are due to be called again before the court on May 14.
Opposition leader Joseph Harmon, who appeared alongside Darren Wade, Geeta Chandan-Edmond and Ronald Daniels as attorneys for the defendants, later called the charges a charade and alleged that the police are being used as a weapon against the MPs. “They [the PPP/C administration] are using the police as a weapon against these MPs. This is not just about them. It is about us. Because this is the state using the police for terrorism against its own people,” Harmon said as he addressed a small crowd which gathered outside the gate of the courtyard.
He further claimed that what is occurring is state-sponsored terrorism and that the charges are part of a campaign to terrorise the opposition and the people who support it.
Wade, who was an APNU+AFC candidate, also described the charges as frivolous and voiced his confidence that they will be dismissed as he contended that there is no evidence to sustain them.
Through the petition, the main opposition had been hoping to invalidate the national recount of ballots cast, which was undertaken by the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) following the contentious March 2, 2020 general and regional elections.
The Chief Justice dismissed the petition, ruling that both Section 22 of the Election Laws Amendment Act (ELAA), and Order 60 which facilitated the recount, were well within the ambit of the Constitution, and therefore lawful.
It was the contention of the petitioners, Claudette Thorne and Heston Bostwick, on behalf of the opposition, that Order 60 was “bad” in law because it was purportedly brought into force by an unlawful piece of legislation, Section 22 of the ELAA.
On August 21, 2020, Jones was controversially arrested after the police carried out a search at his home and seized over $4 million in equipment deemed to be state assets. It was reported that at around 12.30 in the morning, the police allegedly broke a lock and entered the man’s home and arrested him while removing the boxes. He was released on $100,000 bail. The items which were seized were purchased as part of a $4 million government-funded project under the Sustainable Livelihoods and Entrepreneurial Deve-lopment (SLED) programme. However, the manner in which the police carried out the operation, including the deployment of dozens of ranks, an attempt to execute a search without a warrant and their alleged disregard for a court order barring them from proceeding, sparked public outrage and condemnation. It was referred to by Harmon and former president David Granger, as a coordinated political attack.
This newspaper had been informed in January that case file in the matter has not been forwarded to the Chambers of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for legal advice.
