December 27, 2024

Georgetown, Guyana
For immediate release to all media houses

PRESS RELEASE

Alliance For Change Calls for the Appointment of Substantative Chancellor and Chief Justice

As the tumultuous year of 2024 hurtles to fast end, the AFC once again takes the opportunity to highlight a gaping hole in our good governance and democracy tapestry, and that is the continuing absence of substantive appointments of a Chancellor and Chief Justice, and the need to mend it. This imperfection has to be taken care of.

The government seems to delight in photo opportunities – with the opening of new and refurbished courts, but just below the surface of the paint and varnish, is a judiciary that is struggling to maintain its confidence and efficacy, as the third and independent branch and of government. This is most evident in the stubborn refusal to appoint the extant acting Chancellorand Chief Justice.

The Leader of the Opposition has publicly and repeatedly, indicated his ‘no objection’ to the appointments, so constitutionally, there is nothing preventing the appointments. Constitutionally and legally, the government has no excuse whatsoever for not proceeding with the appointments.

Instead, the PPP prefers to make appointments everywhere else than in the Judiciary. One wonders whether this refusal has anything to do with the fact that the two acting heads of the judicial branches, are women and of one ethnic group. We hope that this is not the case. Or is it that the PPP wants rank loyalists to be partisan minions, who will repeat and carry out whatever political instructions are given. Only recently, two retiring judges were forced to take legal action to recover constitutionally entitled retirement benefits, and their circumstances reek of political victimization for failing to give rulings favourable to the PPP.

It is time to steady and reinforce the judiciary, and our democracy, by appointing the Hon. Yonette Cummings-Edwards, and the Hon. Roxane George as Chancellor and Chief Justice respectively. This should be the first order of business before imminent appointments to the Court of Appeal are made.
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