National Assembly passes bill to establish Lay Magistrates’ Courts

-govt refuses request to have bill sent to Special Select Committee

A bill legalising the appointment of lay magistrates and the establishment of Lay Magistrates’ Courts locally was on Thursday evening passed in the National Assembly, ten years after it was first introduced in the House.

The legislation was passed in spite of some reservations by the PNCR-1G and the AFC who both supported the bill in principle but asked that it be sent to a special select committee.

Attorney General Charles Ramson piloted the bill through the House and said that the piece of legislation was the brainchild of the late former president Dr Cheddi Jagan.  He explained that the bill had been introduced to the House back in 1999, and had been sent to a special select committee from which it never emerged.

He emphasised that nothing in the act should be deemed to affect the functioning of the Magistrate’s Court under the Magistrate’s Act and identified it as move that would have a positive impact on the legal system. He said prior to it being brought before the House in 1999, the bill was subject to consultations with sections of the society.

Ramson pointed out that while the Chancellor will have an integral role in the implementation of the system, he emphasised that as long as he was the Attorney General, there will be a clear division between the executive and judicial arms of government.

Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly and PNCR-1G MP, Clarissa Riehl, in a well-articulated presentation, expressed several concerns about the piece of legislation. She said that while the establishment of lay magistrates may have some appeal, she argued that the government should have held consultations with the relative entities.  Riehl said that if the government was so interested in the bill, they should have brought a better thought out piece of legislation rather than the same one that was presented ten years ago.

She also questioned the amount of power the bill endows the Chancellor with and said that this power should have been given to the Judicial Services Commission.  The PNCR-1G MP stated her objection to Clause seven of the bill. According to this clause, “No person shall be appointed as a clerk to a lay magistrates’ court unless at the time of appointment he holds a Bachelor of Laws degree of a university of any Commonwealth country or any equivalent qualification or in the opinion of the Chancellor is a fit and proper person to be appointed as a clerk.” She objected to the fact that the Chancellor had the power to appoint persons without the identified qualifications to be employed as clerks. She argued that this was “a watering-down clause”, which would benefit the friends of those in political power.

Riehl opined that instead of seeking to enact this bill, the government should aim to improve the current judicial system that is backlogged with several cases. She said that the real problem was that the magistrates are being bogged down by the criminal matters in which they have to conduct trials.  She opined that to take away the light matters and to leave the magistrate’s to deal with these heavy, matters was being unfair to them.

She also expressed concerns that the lay magistrates will be made to try serious summary matters but said that since these magistrates cannot impose a penalty of more than $10,000, this could be problematic.

Government MP Anil Nandlall said that the bill came to address the issue of long delays within the local legal system. He stated that the bill will remove a few hundred petty cases from the ambit of the magistrates thus allowing them to focus on the more important cases.

Nandlall, in a well-researched presentation, also refuted the suggestions by Riehl that clause seven of the bill was intended to allow a loophole for persons with political affiliations to be appointed by the Chancellor.  The Attorney-at-law argued that this was a practical element of the legislation since it allowed for the employment of persons with years of practical experience who may not have a law degree.

He argued that a major impact of this bill was that “for the first time in the legal history of Guyana, involves the ordinary people directly in the administration of justice.” He said that this was an integral part of democracy.

AFC Leader Raphael Trotman, in a brief address, stated that his party did not support the piece of legislation “in its present form” primarily because there was not enough consultation on the bill prior to it being brought before the House.  He opined that a bill that sought to reform the jurisprudence of the country should be subject to detailed consultations.

He also stated that there was no mention of the intention to introduce lay magistrates in the Justice Sector Reform Strategy while questioning the necessity of the bill at this time. Trotman, however, emphasised that the AFC supports “any initiative that comprehensively, wholeheartedly and appropriately seeks to reform the judicial system.”

PNCR-1G Deborah Backer questioned the logistics behind the proposed  arrangement to establish Lay Magistrates’ Courts. She questioned how these lay magistrates would be paid and also who would prosecute the defendants in the Lay Magistrate’s Courts. She also said that in other countries lay magistrates do not sit alone but they often had more than one lay magistrate adjudicating a case. She too called for the appointment, discipline and removal of the lay magistrates to be the ambit of the Judicial Service Commission instead of the Chancellor. She called on the government to fix what is already there and “to strengthen the existing foundation.”

Government members Bernard De Santos and Rev Kwame Gilbert also spoke on the motion.
In wrapping up the debate, Ramson accused the opposition parties of trying to frustrate every effort by the government to implement legislation that would lead to improvements in the country and declined to have the bill sent to a Special Select Committee.

The bill was eventually passed with some amendments, including one which allows the lay magistrate to “try a civil case where the dispute does not exceed fifty thousand dollars”, instead of the amount of twenty-five thousand dollars, which was originally outlined in the bill.