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CCJ President engaged Norton on appointment of Chancellor, Chief Justice
(Kaieteur News) – Leader of the People’s National Congress Reform (PNC/R) and former opposition leader, Aubrey Norton, said he was engaged by Caribbean Court of Justice president, Justice Winston Anderson on the appointment of a substantive Chancellor of the judiciary and Chief Justice.
Chairman of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), and Leader of the People’s National Congress Reform (PNC/R), Aubrey Norton
He said however, that the meeting was cut short since he did not feel that the discussion was in the best interest of the country.
During his party’s press conference on Friday, Norton was asked to shed light on the role of the CCJ president in the negotiations between himself (Norton) and President Irfaan Ali on the judicial appointments.
“All I would say to you is that I was engaged by him. I give him my views on the situation and outside of that I know of no other role he would have played,” he disclosed.
Asked if he believed the engagement was at the behest of the CCJ head himself or a request by President Ali, Norton said, “I would be hard-pressed to say I know but I will be it would be reasonable to say I suspect so. In the meeting we had with the president of the CCJ, in which I as opposition leader at the time, you had Mr. Mohamed you had Forward Guyana Amanza Walton, I made it very clear in that meeting that I’m opposed to supersession of any kind including superseding Cummings.”
President of the CCJ, Justice Winston Anderson
Norton had always maintained that he was committed, as opposition leader, to support the substantive appointments of Justice Yonette Cummings-Edwards as Chancellor of the Judiciary and Justice Roxane George-Wiltshire as Chief Justice who were acting in those capacities since 2017. Calls from civil society and international organisations that their appointments be made substantive were all ignored by the head of state.
Norton explained that at the beginning of the discussion, he assumed Justice Anderson was aware of his position that he would only support any substantive appointments if it involved confirming Justices Cummings-Edwards and George Wiltshire. He said it was in that context he was part of the discussions. He said once he realised this was not the case, he ended the engagement.
“He engaged me. I stated the position and at the point when I thought that this wasn’t in the interests of Guyana, I just didn’t continue to engage,” he said.
Last month, President Ali announced that Justice Cummings-Edwards had requested to proceed on pre-retirement leave beginning Monday, October 27, 2025.
The announcement came days after the then acting chancellor returned from a two-month vacation. In her absence, the substantive Chief Justice (ag) Roxane George acted as chancellor, while Justice Navindra Singh occupied Justice George’s office.
Following the president’s announcement of the Justice Cummings-Edwards request, President Ali wrote to Norton seeking his consensus on the substantive appointment of Justice George as Chancellor and Justice Singh as Chief Justice. Norton did not respond to that letter.
Meanwhile, while he did not reveal the content of the engagement with the CCJ president, Norton reminded the media that his party has been on the forefront pushing for the establishment of the CCJ. However, he noted that with actions such as this and others that occurred during the (2020) elections period, “it raises questions about the credibility of the CCJ in terms of dealing with Guyana in a fair way without political partisan involvement.”
He said further, “We are supporters of a Caribbean Court of Justice. We have always been since in the Burnham time. Burnham had advocating it and when it emerged, we supported it. However, I would say to you that there are credibility questions.”
Norton said there is also the question of the actors of the CCJ operating under the assumptions of what happens in Caribbean Islands, when in the case of Guyana, it is a kind of an authoritarian government, “that does not subscribe to the conventions of Westminster and therefore to the extent that they don’t seem to grasp that some of their decisions would be questionable.”
Additionally, he stressed that the recent set of engagement have raised serious concerns “about the impartiality of the Caribbean Court of Justice. I will never see them in the same light that I saw them at the inception of this establishment.”
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