Ram.
Ram wrong again!
I WOULD like to congratulate the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Legal Affairs, Ms. Indira Anandjit for her erudite work on defending her Ministry against the sometimes very harsh and unrelenting critique and social activist, Mr. Christopher Ram.
That being said, she was in her right to defend her Ministry against Mr. Ram’s accusations which were in their entirety, baseless and unfounded based on the exchanges that I read between the two parties.
Mr. Ram began his shifty arguments in a letter dated the 8th of October, 2014, under the caption, “Deficiencies in two legal areas” by saying that the Judicial Review Act is not being brought into force and that the Attorney General Mr. Anil Nandlall is frustrating the decision of Parliament by not bringing the Act into “operation”.
Apparently at the time he wrote that letter he didn’t know that there was no procedure in the Act to make what he is calling for effective, the procedure to do so was contained in the High Court Rules. The Attorney General’s Chambers and Ministry of Legal Affairs had to draw that to his attention.
Ms. Anandjit, highlighted Section 3(1) of the said Act which stated, “an application to the Court for relief against an administrative Act or omission shall be made by way of an application for Judicial Review in accordance with this Act and with Rules of Court.”
Rather than being grateful for the learning he received, he launched an ill-advised attack on the Ministry of Legal Affairs in another letter dated the 8th of October, 2014, under the caption ‘Mr. Nandlall has taken the administration of Justice to its nadir,’ contending that the Ministry was wrong and that the Rules of Court have been in force since 2010 and then demanded that the Attorney General extract, from the Rules of Court, the part dealing with the Judicial Review Act.
Again the Ministry of Legal Affairs had to correct him by responding in another letter dated October 10, 2014, captioned, ‘Comprehension could have avoided this entire exchange,’ where it was articulated that the Rules were not in force and are to be brought in force, not, by the Attorney General, but by the Chancellor of the Judiciary Justice Carl Singh.
This was substantiated in the letter, where Ms. Anandjit highlighted from the commencement of Rules, the part which read that, “Rules shall come into operation subject to the transitional provisions in Part 73, on a date to be fixed by the Chancellor, acting on the decision of the Rules of the Committee.”
In any event, the Rules of Court are always dealt with by the Judiciary and not the Executive, as enshrined in Constitutional Doctrine of Separation of Powers.
Mr. Ram, although he received legal training late in life, he is still a lawyer. Against that backdrop it is shocking, that a lawyer does not know what appears to be matters of an alphabetical nature. I was advised that Mr. Ram lectures law at the University of Guyana. If that is the case then I am truly sorry for the crop of law students that he lectures to. The institution would have to, in the future, make sure that they get capable persons to teach the prestigious law course or risk diluting its standards.