Dear Editor,
It has been reported in the media that Attorney General, Hon. Anil Nandlall announced at the High Court recently that the government will continue to pursue a transformative legislative agenda design-ed to give the nation a cutting-edge legal system to support its development. This is welcome news and we applaud AG Nandlall and the government for its stated intent. The Hon. Attorney General also disclosed the government’s intention to soon take to parliament an Arbitration Bill, one that he described as a CARICOM model and that the government intend to make Guyana an arbitration capital of not only the Caribbean but possibly Central America.
Given our experience of the past decade with our legal system we cannot be as optimistic as the AG as to where this efficiency and integrity will materialize from. While we do not currently have an arbitration framework designed to expeditiously resolve commercial disputes, we do have a specialist Commercial Court established for the very purpose. In the matter of Precision Woodworking Limited (PWL), in receivership v. the Receiver and Republic Bank Limited which we have followed on behalf of former employees of PWL, the very specialist court took almost nine years to give its Decision, one that was, wait for it, illegal! The Appeal which has been filed will take an indeterminate number of years to be heard. This cannot be justice but rather its antithesis.
We wish the AG and the government well in its quest to deliver a cutting-edge legal system. If this was ever badly needed, it is now more critical in the economic takeoff our country is poised for.
Sincerely,
Eustace Marshall
Eon Andrews
