Georgetown: The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) was reminded of its role as the sole supervisory authority ruling out a CARICOM supervise a national recount after the Court of Appeal on Sunday dismissed the appeal against the Full Court decision to discharge the injunctions blocking a national recount of votes cast on March 02, preventing a High Court trial.
The consequential orders will be issued by 13: 30 hrs Monday.
Appellate Judges, Justice Dawn Gregory, Rishi Persaud and Brassington Reynolds presided over the appeal filed by APNU/AFC candidate Ulita Moore, challenging a decision by the Full Court.
All the lawyers understood the judgment of the court, except Senior Counsel Roysdale Forde but the court is unlikely to make changes to its ruling.
Chair of GECOM, Justice Claudette Singh also ruled on Friday that a recount would go ahead with or without CARICOM.
In her ruling, Justice Gregory-Barnes noted that the GECOM chair, in her affidavit, pointed to her powers under the Constitution that the elections should be independently supervised by GECOM, and therefore the responsibility is on GECOM to supervise the elections to ensure fairness and impartiality.
Justice Gregory-Barnes asserted the supervisory jurisdiction of the High Court to see if the provisions of the Constitution regarding the functions were being breached.
But she stressed that while that is the case, the matter was never heard by Justice Franklyn Holder, and so it ought not to go back to him.
Justice Rishi Persaud was the only judge that upheld the “irresistible conclusions” of the Full Court that GECOM can decide the methodology by which it addresses deficiencies.
But Justice Brassington Reynolds felt that by moving to have CARICOM supervise the recount, GECOM was outsourcing its constitutional responsibilities – the same position of Justice Gregory-Barnes.
Justice Persaud in dissenting to that view stated that GECOM is mandated to ensure a fair and impartial election and is required to put in place mechanisms to achieve that purpose.
In her decision, Justice Gregory-Barnes, noted the argument of Ulita Moore, the applicant, through her attorney Keith Scotland, that the votes cast have been duly counted and since calls for a recount were rejected, there may be no further count or recount and the Presidential candidate of the winning list should be declared and that GECOM should make a public declaration of results for membership of the National Assembly.
But Justice Gregory-Barnes noted that Moore’s arguments cannot be upheld since GECOM has wide-ranging powers to decide on how it conducts the elections.
On Tuesday, Chief Justice (ag) Roxane George, who presided in the Full Court along with Justice Naresh Harnanan, ruled that the High Court has no jurisdiction to hear the application filed by Moore.
The Full Court took into account the fact that the Chair of GECOM, Justice (ret’d) Claudette Singh, had given a public undertaking that the votes would be recounted to ensure that the results of the polls are credible and accepted by the various stakeholders.
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