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The law firm Hughes, Fields, and Stoby is representing several persons charged by the Peoples’ Progressive Party (PPP) administration with electoral fraud stemming from their involvement in the 2020 General and Regional Elections at various levels.
Senior Partner Attorney at Law Nigel Hughes to our publication after a recent hearing at Georgetown’s Magistrate’s Court, “What I can say today is that we’ve made absolutely no progress. We are in exactly the same position we were on the last occasion we came to court. Nothing has been done today. The prosecution was not in a position to proceed.”
Several defendants also expressed frustration at the three-year wait to clear their names. Counsel for the defendants contended, “They’re asking the magistrate to write to the chancellor, which he can’t do. They asked her to hear all the matters together. Which physically is not possible. And, she made that clear to them. And we, we indicated to them that this is a complete waste of time. No progress was made today. None.”
Hughes posited, “I think what is clearly happening here is the prosecution are in a state of some considerable disarray. Because, actually what we did in the court is we suggested to Mr. Ramdhani (Special Prosecutor Darshan Ramdhani) that what he should do is pick his strongest case, present that case for whichever defendant, and we go ahead and deal with it. If he is not successful in that, present the other. He’s trying to have all these cases heard together. Really, it’s not feasible. I don’t know what objective he has in mind.”
“And it really is a complete waste of the court’s resources. And the administration of justice. These people have been sitting here for three years. This is unacceptable. We are, of course, considering whether the rights protected under 144 of the Constitution, which says the right to a fair trial within a reasonable time, whether we are now at that stage, the Chief Magistrate didn’t think so before, but we can’t continue with no end in sight,” the senior lawyer contended.
