The Appeal Court yesterday upheld the legality of President David Granger’s unilateral appointment of retired judge James Patterson as Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), saying that he did not act unreasonably in doing so.
In an almost three-hour-long ruling, the court disagreed with arguments that President Granger’s resort to the constitutional proviso in Article 161 (2) for the unilateral appointment of Patterson was unlawfully invoked and resultantly dismissed the appeal brought by PPP Executive Secretary Zulfikar Mustapha to a previous ruling by Chief Justice Roxane George.
The court declared that the various lists supplied to the president by Leader of the Opposition Bharrat Jagdeo was not done in the manner contemplated by the framers of the constitution. As a result, acting Chancellor Yonette Cummings-Edwards and Justices of Appeal Rishi Persaud and Dawn Gregory, who heard the appeal, said the president could not thereafter be faulted for having invoked the proviso as he is legally entitled to do.
