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WHAT IS THERE TO BE ADVERTIZED?

Jun 29, 2015 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The Constitution of Guyana provides that for the appointment of the Chief Justice and the Chancellor of the Judiciary there must be agreement between the President and the Leader of the Opposition. For many years now there has been no agreement and therefore no appointment could have been made.
The result is that the substantive Chief Justice is acting as the Chancellor and another judge is acting as Chief Justice. This has been going on for years now and represents a major problem not just for the image of the judiciary but for its independence since essentially the confirmation of these top positions is being stymied by political gridlock.
It was also felt that the PNCR’s refusal to confirm the two persons acting for years in the position amounted to a vote of no-confidence in those persons.
The PNCR when it was in opposition had sought to break this gridlock by indicating that the positions should be advertised. But this in itself does not solve the problem because there still has to be agreement between the President and the Leader of the Opposition and if there is no agreement, interviews or no interviews, there cannot be any appointment.
It seems that the government needs to be reminded of this fact because it is saying that it will be advertising the positions. Well that is not its role in the first place.
It is the role of the Judicial Service Commission and the government can be accused of meddling in the affairs of the judiciary by even suggesting something like this. But mistakes are going to be made by the new government and accommodation has to be made for the occasional mistake.
The government has no locus standi to advertise any position for the Bench. That is the responsibility of the Judicial Service Commission.
Quite notably there is now a coalition government in place comprising the APNU and the AFC. The AFC’s position has always been that it feels that given the length of time that the Chancellor and Chief Justice have been acting that they should be confirmed in their positions.
Has the AFC changed its position on this?  Did the AFC concur with the recent statement, attributed to a government spokesperson that the positions would be advertised?
If it did not, then it raises a number of questions including whether some form of democratic centralism is guiding decision making within the Cabinet. This would be unfortunate because it would be against the spirit of the Cummingsburg Accord. But that is an issue for another day.
If you have someone acting in a position for a long time there has to be an expectation that the person would be confirmed. By then asking them to apply for the position you are humiliating that person.
This should not be happening in the judiciary and it should not be at the behest of the executive arm of the government. In some jurisdictions there would have been a huge public outcry over what is taking place. This is rather unfortunate and will affect the morale of the judiciary which has enough problems of its own.
It should also be noted that there is a substantive Chief Justice. With the agreement of a former Leader of the Opposition, it was decided that he should act as Chancellor until the deadlock was resolved. It is therefore strange to hear that both positions are going to be advertised. How can both positions be advertised when there is only a vacancy in one position.
These are not simple mistakes that are being made. There are legal luminaries that are in Cabinet and they should have brought these things to the attention of their colleagues. It is too early for such dangerous manevourves to be made.
By the way is it true that the government sent a team to Venezuela over the weekend to discuss the continuation of the Petro Caribe Agreement?
If this is so then the whole approach to the recent Decree issued by Caracas is out of sync because what should have been done first is being done last. How can you go to Caracas days after one member of the government publicly says that Venezuela knows what it has to do: It has to behave itself.
Does anyone really believe that in the face of this approach that the Venezuelans are going to agree to anything?

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