Straining credulity…
Guyana Times
…and legal logic
The AFC held a press conference to address its no-confidence ouster, but its leader Raphael Trotman didn’t show up. What gives? Has his “Nassau Accord” crafted with Granger been transmuted into full PNC membership? Naah! Full of himself, his internal memo to AFC execs before the LGE revealed he’d plotted to blackmail the PNC with the mega votes he expected!! He didn’t want to be grilled about his delusive megalomania?
Anyhow, Chairman Ramjattan fielded most of the questions, and insisted he and the party didn’t know AFC MP Charrandas Persaud was a Canadian citizen!! Now, this has to be the biggest joke of the year, and someone in the audience should’ve yelled out to him, “Haul yuh ass!!” The AFC in general, and Ramjattan in particular, knew Charrandas had lived in Canada for donkey years! CP didn’t have to tell them. Didn’t they wonder how he was able to live there, since, unlike the US, Canada doesn’t have a “permanent resident” category?? CP’s Canadian citizenship was a NOTORIOUS fact, to which the AFC closed its eyes!!
But Ramjattan didn’t just lie through his teeth just because he’s a serial liar; he is, but this time he had a reason. If the AFC knew CP was a dual citizen but allowed him to sit in Parliament, the case in front of the court brought because of this “defect” would be summarily thrown out because of the legal principle of “estoppel”. This “precludes a person from asserting something contrary to what is implied by a previous action or statement of that person”!! You can’t knowingly shut your eyes to CP’s illegality and then expediently ask the Court to let you benefit from citing the illegality!!
This doctrine will also have the Government’s case on “34- seat majority” thrown out. Between 2011 and 2015, the APNU and AFC insisted, and was conceded that, together, they had a “33-seat majority” in the National Assembly. And overtly so after 2015. Before the no-confidence vote, APNU Whip Amna Ally and PM Nagamootoo gloated, “Bring it on!! We have a 33-seat majority!” When the Speaker ruled that the “No confidence motion was carried” with CP’s vote, no one on the Government side objected. In the subsequent press conference, the PM and the APNU Chair, Volda Lawrence, accepted they were defeated by the 33 votes. The next day, the President also agreed!
And suddenly, grasping a demented brainwave floated about “half bodies”, they changed their minds and brought the case. The law will not have this; the court will rule they are “estopped”!!
Which means just what it says! Election in three months!!