While stating that the Acting Chief Justice and Chancellor are working and the country is not in crisis, President Irfaan Ali would not commit to a timeframe for substantive appointments but hinted that the Judicial Services Commission would be first set up.
“We don’t have a Judicial Service Com-mission [JSC] as yet. You can’t look at an entire judiciary without having a holistic solution. So let me say very clearly at the appropriate time, the matter of the Chancellor and the Chief Justice will be brought on the agenda. You have a chancellor. You have someone performing the duties of a chancellor right now. How do you think I was sworn in? Who swore the president in? It is the chancellor, the Acting Chancellor who swore to present. So I don’t know, it’s not like the country’s without a chancellor,” he told the Stabroek News in an exclusive interview on Monday.
Justice Yonette Cummings-Edwards and Justice Roxane George SC were respectively appointed acting Chancellor of the Judiciary and Chief Justice back in 2016 and 2017, following the retirement of then acting Chancellor Carl Singh, who was also never confirmed despite having served for 12 years.