Appeal Court to rule on jurisdiction in election petition case

Nov 27, 2021 News

Kaieteur News – On December 21, 2021, Guyana’s Court of Appeal (CoA) is expected to rule as to whether or not the Full Court of the High Court has jurisdiction to hear the election petition case.
Yesterday the matter continued virtually and the judges that presided over the matter are Chancellor of the Judiciary (Ag), Yonette Cummings-Edwards, and Justices Dawn Gregory, and Rishi Persaud.

Guyana’s Court of Appeal.

The issue regarding the Full Court’s jurisdiction to preside over the election petition case was raised in a previous hearing. This resulted in the matter being adjourned to facilitate the lawyers laying over submissions in relation to the aforementioned.
On October 26, last, Attorney General (AG) and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall, SC, and Trinidadian Senior Counsel Douglas Mendes, had suggested to the Appellate Court judges that they set a date for the ruling on the election petition mitigation.
During that hearing, Mendes indicated that he had no further submissions to be made in the matter, and the AG also disclosed that that hearing would be his last participation in the hearing of this matter. The AG had also put on record that he disagrees that the Full Court has the jurisdiction to hear the election mitigation and outlined reasons for his opinion.
According to reports, the first election petition #99 challenging the outcome of the March 2, 2020 elections was dismissed by Chief Justice (Ag) Roxane George-Wiltshire, SC, on January 18, last, while the remaining election petition #88 was thrown out on April 26, 2021, by the same judge. As such, both matters were appealed by Monica Thomas and Brenan Nurse, who on behalf of the A Partnership for Nation Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) Coalition are seeking to challenge the validity of the March 02, 2020, national elections.
Yesterday, in his address to the court, Mendes pointed out that Opposition Member of Parliament (MP) and attorney-at-law Roysdale Forde, argued in his submissions on the jurisdiction of the Appellate Court instead of the jurisdiction of the Full Court.
Mendes then stated that he has nothing further to submit to the court, before asking the court to disregard the submissions made by the Opposition MP.
As such, December 21 was set for ruling on the issue of jurisdiction. It should be noted that the substantive appeal for the matter has not been heard, as yet.

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