Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall S.C, has responded to the statement issued by the Guyana Association of Women Lawyers (GAWL). The GAWL, in a statement, has denounced the attack on the judiciary and called for a cessation to the peddling, broadcasting, transmitting or in any way disseminating information that may lower public confidence in Judicial Officers and the Judiciary.
The statement was in response to the AG’s attack on Senior Magistrate Leron Daly who dismissed the case against former Minister Winston Jordan, which Nandlall called an “egregious error,” followed by swath of allegations that commentators, legal and otherwise, saw as an attempt to bring disrepute to the learned magistrate, judiciary and legal profession.
Responding to the GAWL’s statement, Nandlall, in a release said the basis of his criticism is the learned Magistrate omitted to follow a decision of the acting Chief Justice Roxane George-Wiltshire S.C by which she is bound by the principle of State Decisis and the Doctrine of Precedent.
“This written ruling of the Hon. Chief Justice was submitted to the learned Magistrate and it contained a decision of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), Guyana’s apex court, on the very issue.”
The GAWL had called on the AG to desist from “disparaging remarks” and “attacks.”
Nandlall continues to contend the Magistrate chose to ignore the decisions of both acting Chief Justice and the CCJ by which she is bound. “It is this omission to which I pointed and described as an ‘elementary egregious error’[and] resolutely maintain that I am entitled to express such a view and that the same falls within the bounds of permissible criticism countenanced by law.”
He also accused the GAWL of not providing evidence to support their contention about his reaction to the ruling.
Attorney-at-law Selwyn Pieters also came out against the AG’s behaviour, and called on him to stop attacking the judiciary, including the magistracy. In a statement posted on his Facebook, which was carried in Village Voice News, Pieters contended since the AG is referring the acting Chief Justice matter of Winston Brassington and Dr. Ashni Singh v Munilal Persaud, Commissioner of Police, Ann McLennan, Chief Magistrate and Shalimar Ali-Hack, Director of Public Prosecutions 2018-HC-DEM-CIV-FDA-757, he is ignoring pertinent facts.
Pieters pointed out that Nandlall can’t be selective on rulings and doing this brings his “very credibility into question and simply adds more currency to the criticism that was levelled in [his] direction by the Caribbean Court of Justice last October.”
The CCJ, in October 2022, addressed concern about Nandlall leaking the ruling on the Election Petition on his Facebook, and sought to blame it on his administrator, even though Court Judgments go to Attorneys of Record and not Facebook.
The Court informed that “the premature, unauthorised disclosure of the result of the litigation is inexcusable. It betrays the confidence of the Court and, given the fact that it emanated from the Facebook account of the person holding the office of the Attorney General, it serves to bring the entire administration of justice into disrepute.”
