-Says will appeal Ali’s unilaterally appointment of acting Commissioner of Police
Chief Justice (ag) Roxane George-Wiltshire ruled on Thursday, August 11, 2022, that the President’s decision to unilaterally appoint Clinton Hicken to act as Commissioner of Police in the absence of a Leader of the Opposition and a Police Services Commission was constitutional.
The Chief Justice said in the absence of both an elected Opposition Leader and an appointed Chairman of the Police Service Commission at the time of Hicken’s appointment in March 2022, the President had to act to ensure there was a Commissioner of Police in place.
However, Senior Counsel Roysdale Forde SC in a statement since, said the ruling that President Irfaan Ali did not violate the Constitution when he unilaterally appointed Mr. Hicken to act as Commissioner of Police in the absence of consultations, is regrettable.
“The decision delivered by the acting Chief Justice in the matter of Jones v Attorney General must be cause for great concern and it is regrettable that it is to be considered as a judicial green light to unilateral appointments by the Presidency and of course by Irfan Ali, the current President,” Forde said in a statement.
Forde further posited that the CJ decision appears to be preoccupied with the fact that there was no Opposition Leader for a period of three months.
“The decision while strangely and eerily silent on the unilateral removal of the entire Police Service Commission by Irfan Ali, is preoccupied with the impact and purport of then vacancy in the office of the Leader of the Opposition, without any consideration that the President failed to appoint the Police Service Commission for months substantially contributing to the state of affairs that led to the action being filed in the Court,” Forde said.
The life of the Police Service Commission expired in August 2021 after the entire Commission had already been suspended by the President. On May 31, 2022, a new Commission was reconstituted by the President.
Mr. Forde said by the Court’s own analysis on the failure of the President to constitute the Police Service Commission must therefore be an operating reason for the Court-approved unilateral appointment of Hicken, presumably as much as the absence of a person occupying the office of Leader of the Opposition.
“It is disappointing that the Court failed to recognise and or consider that the state of affairs was created by the unconstitutional removal of the Police Service Commission and the failure by the President to constitute the said Commission,” he said.
The Chief Justice in her ruling reportedly said that in her legal analysis of the matter, the President’s full compliance with the Constitution was impossible because of circumstances beyond his control.
According to another leading Attorney our publication engaged, the ruling by the Chief Justice could be interpreted as putting the Presidency above the constitution of Guyana. He said that the ruling diminishes the powers of the Constitution and elevates the president as the supreme leader.
“It is constitutional anarchy, a fetter of the guardianship role of the supreme court, the greatest diminishing of the supreme law clause ever seen. Guyana’s President is once again Executive, the supreme ruler and answerable to no one and to nothing.”
Attorney General Anil Nandlall had argued “There is a doctrine in law called necessity. It is said that necessity knows no law, meaning that whenever there is a gap in the law, wherever there is a lacuna in the law, whenever there is an impossibility to comply with legal requirements, the doctrine of necessity is necessarily activated and allows for normalcy to resume or to continue until that which is absent, that which is not available is rectified.”
Former President David Granger had argued the Doctrine of Necessity before the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) in the case of the appointment of Justice Patterson as GECOM Chairman. The court in rendering its judgment in that case stated that “consensus and inclusiveness were paramount in the selection process and to safeguard democratic principles.”
More, In The Ring.
