Parliament’s quiet victory this past week

Aug 05, 2012 News

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….AG finds Opposition support targeting ‘Archaic Land Law’

By Gary Eleazar

Parliamentary Sessions in recent months have been very intense and bitter at times, with verbal banter taking on no holds barred connotations.
Members of Parliament do enjoy immunity when speaking on the floor of the Chambers, and this is sometimes abused, but sometimes every so often there is consensus on a burning issue, and those from opposite sides of the aisle, would come together in the interest of the people they serve – which is the Guyanese populace – across the country’s 83,000 square miles.
Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs Anil Nandlall has had no honeymoon from the day he took office as there was firstly the cloud hanging over his head that he was no Senior Counsel.

I have know the Attorney General for some time now, precisely from the days when he a mere lawyer. Be that as it may, this young Attorney-at-Law had a healthy ambition, one of which was to have a section of Guyana’s Land Law amended.
He had abhorred the “Archaic Land Law that facilitates fraud.”
This past week I smiled as the debates got underway in the House and it was time to address the matter of the Deeds Registry (Amendment Bill).
A very unassuming name for a landmark piece of legislation as had been intimated by the Attorney General as he rose to make his presentation.
Truth be told, he even paid attention to the young to make his case for the law to be amended even as he indicated that he would require some time to fully explain the magnitude of the changes he was looking to make.
Words like ‘mischief’ and ‘fraud’ were used to describe arrangements facilitated as a result of the “Archaic Land Law” he was looking to reverse.
Basil Williams of A Partnership For National Unity, on behalf of the coalition, signaled support for the amendment to the law, but with one request.
This request was repeated by Alliance for Change (AFC) Chairman, Khemraj Ramjattan who also supported the Bill which was seeking to prevent further ‘mischief.’
The Members of Parliament regaled the House with experiences of the Law in action and learned practitioners wondering how for hundreds of years the piece of legislation could have remained on the books unchanged.
The similar request that found favour with the Attorney General was that of having the Amendments to the Law be put before a Special Select Committee.
Ramjattan urged that this be done to facilitate input from at least few senior counsel, some of whom he would have been in contact with.
Nandlall acquiesced to the request, and as such the Bill has been committed to a Special Select Committee to report back to the House for debate, and passage no later than December 31 this year.
The House will meet on Thursday after which time it will take a scheduled recess and reconvene on October 10.
Four years ago, in conversation with Nandlall and another young attorney in his Chambers, Manoj Narayan, I learnt of their plan to wage a campaign aimed at updating the Local Land laws.
The primary component that is believed to be missing from the current legislation is the principal of “vested interest” in the face of an agreement of sale of land.
Guyana’s Land Law as has been explained by Nandlall on numerous occasions is inherited from the ‘Roman Dutch’ system and does not cater for equitable interest of land.
Under this system, land is owned via a titled document known as a ‘transport.’ This transport confers upon its holder absolute ownership.
Under English Law, a title holder, once he enters into an agreement of sale, the purchaser in that agreement acquires an interest which is called an equitable interest in the land which the purchaser can sell, dispose of, mortgage or alienate.
Under English Law, the titled owner of the property, after entering into an agreement of sale with any other person, “cannot deal with that property as he sees fit…every subsequent dealing with the property is subject to the purchaser’s equitable interest.”
Under the Roman Dutch System, there are mechanisms in place to protect the interest of the person entering into an agreement of sale with the transported owner of the land.
These mechanisms, however, are viewed as inadequate, “based on experience” to protect the potential purchaser of the land.
Morally, the persons selling the property, once having entered into an initial agreement of sale, ought not to enter in another.
“But this is happening,” the AG asserted.
Technically, under the present system, every conveyance from one owner to another must be advertised in the Official Gazette, so that a person who has an interest in the land has the opportunity to oppose the passing of the conveyance on the grounds that the person already has an interest in that land, which is the agreement of sale already entered into.
“Once that opposition is filed within the prescribed time then the conveyance would not pass.”
However, the problem that this poses is that very rarely would a person who enters into an agreement of sale check with the Official Gazette.
It was noted, also, that the availability of Official Gazette has also been a problem. (This too is a move that Nandlall has successfully sought to correct, with an amendment to the Gazette Laws, now making it available online).
As a result of the conundrum with the current land laws many people lose their deposits, are ousted out of the transaction, and a great miscarriage of justice occurs, because the land is then sold a second time to a third party and transport is passed to that person without the knowledge of the original purchaser.”
There are many documented instances still pending in the local courts, and as such, the injustice continues unabated on several Guyanese who on a daily basis lose their hard-earned money because of an archaic law.
“Under the local Deeds Registry Act, a transport confers upon the holder absolute ownership subject only to certain interest therein lifted,” exclusive of an agreement.
The Attorney General is seeking among other measures to have an agreement of sale included under those provisions as a registered interest, making it mandatory to have the agreement registered at the Deeds Registry and endorsed on the transport, hence barring any subsequent agreement of sale without involving the purchaser in the original agreement of sale giving that person a real opportunity to oppose the sale, because he would have a registered interest in the land in question.

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