Judiciary, bar group must respond to Jagdeo attack on judges -PNCR

The PNCR has called on the Guyana Bar Association and the Acting Chancellor and Chief Justice to speak out on what it calls recent attempts by President Bharrat Jagdeo to humiliate the judiciary publicly.

At the party’s weekly press briefing yesterday, PNCR executive Aubrey Norton told the media that the attacks by the President on the two recent rulings handed down by Justice William Ramlal and Justice Jainarayan Singh Jnr will undermine public confidence in the judiciary.

In the first, Justice Ramlal on November 16 had ruled that one person could not hold both the position of Chancellor and Chief Justice and that simultaneously holding both positions for an extended period is unconstitutional.

The government had appealed this ruling and Jagdeo had said his government did not think that the ruling took into consideration all the facts of the case, especially the difficulty of concluding agreements in the new consultative process that was established by the National Assembly and the new Constitution.

GINA had quoted him as saying that long before the ruling the public had been informed that “we had started the process of consultation with the leader of the Opposition to fill the positions