Since the retirement of Chancellor (ag) Carl Singh and Chief Justice (ag) Ian Chang, the issue of their replacement has been at the forefront of discourse, at least privately, in legal circles, but occasionally in the media. I myself wrote about the issue once when I called on President Granger to appoint persons to fill the posts which had become vacant and had remained so for several months. I was quite pleased when the President made acting appointments of Chief Justice Yonette Cummings-Edwards as Chancellor (ag) and of Justice George-Wiltshire SC as Chief Justice (ag). Justice George-Wiltshire SC who was also subsequently appointed as an Appeal Court Judge.
These two acting appointments, which only required consultation with the Leader of the Opposition, were enormously popular in the legal profession. After some months as acting appointees, I can say with certainty that the anticipated performances of the Chancellor (ag) and Chief Justice (ag) have exceeded expectations amidst enormous challenges, which had commenced under the chancellorship of Carl Singh, not least among which are the implementation of the new Civil Procedure Rules, the establishment of courts with new jurisdictions for family and sexual offences, the appointment of additional judges and a building programme to house courts, magistrates and judges. I believe that this opinion is shared by the legal profession.
The manner of selection of high judicial officers came under scrutiny when the recently appointed Court of Appeal Judge Rabi Sukul, was forced to resign in February, 2014, after a seven month stint, when it was reported that he had been disbarred in the United Kingdom. Justice Sukul had been appointed in the normal way after an application to the Judicial Service Commission. Quite often, and historically, persons make or are invited to make applications. This practice continues today. But at around that time President Granger, then Leader of the Opposition, expressed the view that applications should be invited by public advertisements in Guyana and the Caribbean.
