GUYANA-President Ali says JSC will make substantive appointments in the judiciary.

GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC – President Irfaan Ali says the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) will make the substantive appointments of the Chief Justice and Chancellor of the Judiciary, even as he acknowledged that there are “ a lot of vacancies and appointments that need to be made.”

Speaking at a news conference on Saturday, President Ali told reporters that the JSC would conduct its work independently.

In 2017, the then-president of the Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), Sir Dennis Byron, expressed concern about the inability of present and previous administrations to appoint a Chancellor and Chief Justice.

Sir Dennis, who addressed the issue when he spoke to the Guyana Bar Association (GBA), said that according to Guyana’s Constitution, the Chancellor and Chief Justice should be appointed by the President after obtaining the agreement from the opposition leader.

However, he said that for 12 years, successive presidents and leaders of the opposition have been unable to agree on the appointments, reminding the audience that the Office of Chancellor of the Judiciary of Guyana became vacant when Justice Desiree Barnard joined the Bench of the CCJ, which is also Guyana’s highest and final court.

His successor, Justice Adrian Saunders, also addressed the issue in April last year when he told the GBA that “there is one significant blot on an otherwise impressive Guyanese legal and judicial landscape. For the country to have not appointed a Chancellor for 17 long years is very disappointing, likewise, to be without an appointed Chief Justice for several years”.

President Ali did not respond to reporters on whether they favored the persons now acting in the two positions.

“That commission will now conduct its work independently; not only the issue of the Chancellor and the Chief Justice, but I know they’re working on the judiciary in its macro form because there are a lot of vacancies and appointments that need to be made,” he said.

“We want excellence” in all three arms of government- the executive, legislature and the judiciary. What I’m concerned about is an effective judicial system that we can rely on, one that the international community can rely on, one that is efficient and supported by necessary technology and infrastructure that will make them efficient…

“One in which we have the full complement of judges and magistrates, and that is what the JSC is for, so I’m not going to confine myself to individuals or posts. I’m going to confine myself to the system and get a holistic system,” he told reporters.

The JSC has nothing constitutionally to do with the substantive appointment of a Chancellor and a Chief Justice but requires the agreement of the Opposition Leader.

“We have to look at the entire judiciary,” Ali said, adding, “I want the work of the Judicial Service Commission to be expanded so that we can understand the fullness of the issues and challenges of the judiciary so that we can holistically approach this.”

In June last year, Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton wrote to the President indicating his support for Justice Roxane George-Wiltshire, the acting Chief Justice, and Justice of Appeal, Yonette Cummings, as Chancellor to the substantive posts of Chief Justice and head of the judiciary.

In April this year, the High Court ruled President Ali did not breach the Constitution and could not order timelines for the executive to take action. Still, it urged him and the Opposition Leader to act swiftly in keeping with the measures outlined in the Constitution regarding the appointments.

Justice Damone Younge urged Norton to move quickly to hold discussions with President Ali in keeping with the provisions of the Constitution regarding the appointments.

“No further delay and excuse will countenance,” Justice Younge said, noting the decades-long delay in the non-appointment of the officeholders to the two top judicial posts.

“This court finds that given the particular circumstances that have tended to this case, delay in initiating the process for the substantive appointment of the Chancellor and Chief Justice by His Excellency the President under Article 127(1) is not a breach of the Constitution, for this court is unable to find that such a delay meets a threshold of gross dereliction of constitutional duty on the part of the President,” she said.

Asked by reporters whether the government’s dissatisfaction with a number of the rulings by the Guyana Court of Appeal on political cases was a consideration for not wanting to appoint a substantive Chancellor readily, President Ali remarked that on each occasion his ruling People’s Progressive Party had been “vindicated” by the CCJ.

He did, however, say whether that was a consideration for the delay.

“No, no, no. You’re taking your assumption a bit far with me not wanting to appoint the Chancellor and the Chief Justice,” he said.