Two magistrates dismissed for infractions – AFC uses dismissal to gain political mileage

THE Judicial Service Commission (JSC) took a decision last week to dismiss serving magistrates Geeta Chandan-Edmond and Chandra Sohan for alleged infractions. According to reports, Chandan-Edmond who presided at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Court appeared before the Commission where it was said that while she was on maternity leave, a Minutes Book went missing.

Geeta Chandan-Edmond

A Kaieteur News article dated February 21, also added to the list of infractions highlighting that the dismissed magistrate was facing, “charges ranging from her inability to deliver 19 decisions, to her leaving the country without approval.
“Being absent from a Magistrates’ Association meeting to discuss the Sexual Offences Act; failing to report absence from work to the Chancellor and failure to respond to queries from the Chief Magistrate are said to be a few other reasons for her dismissal,” the daily newspaper was quoted as saying.
Chandan-Edmond was expected to sentence the son of Prime Minister Samuel Hinds sometime next week, following assault charges which were laid against him last year.
Samuel Hinds Jr. was found guilty of assaulting 18-year old Tenza Lane last year by the outgoing magistrate. As such, his sentence was expected to be handed down sometime next week by the said magistrate.
However, the Alliance For Change (AFC) have since sought to use the issue to gain political mileage by linking the dismissal of Chandan-Edmond to the Government of Guyana, since she — Chandan-Edmond – was expected to sentence the prime minister’s son.
In a statement issued by the AFC yesterday, the party suggested that the magistrate was fired because she found Prime Minister Samuel Hinds’s son guilty on an unlawful wounding charge and was supposed to hand down his sentence.
“There was no hearing or any invitation to any hearing on the allegations for the entire year of 2014. Samuel Hinds Jr. was charged with a serious criminal offence of unlawful wounding on the 3rd March 2014. Magistrate Geeta Chandan-Edmond conducted the trial and found Samuel Hinds Jr. guilty on the 6th February, 2015.”
In contradictory fashion however, the same release went on to explain that Chandan-Edmond was written to by the Commission since January. This was a few months prior to the Magistrate finding Hinds guilty.

Chandra Sohan

Chandan-Edmond in an interview with HGP Nightly News was reported as saying: “It’s hurting to know I lost my job all because I followed my oath.” She continued: “There are no allegations of illegality or impropriety levelled against me.”
Meanwhile, Senior Magistrate Chandra Sohan was fired by the Commission following allegations of document tampering. Prior to this, he was given temporary marching orders last December for a number of issues, including: leaving the country during the month of December 2013 without permission; unauthorised absence from work on December 28, 2013 and January 7, 2014; and discrepancies, which were discovered between fines recorded by him on magisterial case jackets.