Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs Anil Nandlall, SC, says an appeal filed at the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) in the election matter Krystal Fisher v. Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has already been flagged by the court’s registry as “defective.”
“They hurriedly, in their quest to seek publicity, published in the press that they [had] filed an appeal to the Caribbean Court of Justice,” Nandlall said.
“Expectedly, the documents that were filed at the CCJ were incompetently filed, and the court has already sent an email indicating that the documents filed are defective.”
The Attorney General contended that if the legal team could not properly perfect the notice of appeal and supporting papers, there was little prospect of success on the merits when the matter is called.
In August, Fisher, the Appellant, filed a Fixed Date Application seeking the issuance of several declarations.
She asserted that GECOM’s exclusion of the symbols for the Forward Guyana Movement (FGM) and Assembly of Liberty and Prosperity (ALP) from the ballot in constituencies where these parties neither contested nor fielded candidates violated Articles 13, 59, and 149 of the Constitution of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana (Cap 1:01).
The case was dismissed by both the High Court and the Court of Appeal, and costs were awarded.
According to the Attorney General, four judges across the two courts, High Court Judge Navindra Singh, and a Court of Appeal panel led by Acting Chancellor Roxane George with Justices of Appeal Rishi Persaud and Nareshwar Harnanan, used unusually strong language in characterising the litigation as “unmeritorious,” “baseless,” and an “abuse of the process.”
Nandlall said Fisher, whom he described as “an unsuspecting citizen” from Region Nine, has already attracted a costs order of $4 million arising from the lower-court proceedings.
He warned that taking the case further to the CCJ could escalate those costs “into the millions,” and argued that those he termed the “intellectual authors and instigators” of the claim appeared indifferent to the financial risk being placed on the litigant.
Nandlall also indicated that, should the appeal proceed, he would ask the CCJ to consider making cost orders that reflect responsibility for initiating and directing the litigation, stating he would “make representations… that at least the lawyer should assist in bearing some of the costs.”
