Dear Editor
SOME forty years ago as a student of law at UWI, I bought one of Lord Denning’s literary master pieces. It is titled “The Discipline of Law.” At page 26, there is a strange sub-heading- “unusual common sense”. That great jurist with accustomed erudition elucidates why to be truly right might require that you avoid and abandon rules of technicalities. Statistics which does nothing but shows off one’s dispensation to accountancy, can amount to an abandonment of common sense.
Christopher Ram, it is, who by his pendantic, callous criticism of “Harmon, Norton and Williams” has, paradoxically displayed irrelevancy, coupled with a reckless, comedial disregard, and abandonment of common sense (“Foolishness peddled by Harmon, Norton, Williams and their recount agents cannot pass common sense test” S.N Sunday May 31st, 2020).
Editor, it is public knowledge that Christopher Ram (CR) is an accountant. But, you cannot by an indulgence in extravagant statistical/accounting technicalities, disagree that if, inter alia as regards “Ballot Box 779..352 ballots were issued… 377 were discovered in the box at the recount” (quoting from “We need Answers” Joseph Harmon GC Sunday May 31st, 2020) that, (without offending common sense) that is a glaring irregularity, (being only but one of the plethora of irregularities/ anomalies exposed at the recount process), the question then becomes: what is the veracity of those exposures? There can be no doubt or question given Caricom’s oversight its high visibility, of the transparency, and reality of disclosure and exposures; and hence their veracity. Our common sense tells us that there CANNOT be more genuine ballots than the 352 genuine ballots that were issued to the presiding officer. For there to be 377 (25 more) is irregularity, rigging most foul. No amount of what in this recount context, is Ram’s statistical rubbish can make or convert 352 into 377! Yet that is CRs pious endeavor in his letter even as he castigates “Harmon, Norton, Williams” for “foolishness” self aggrandized claim to be endowed with common sense (much less unusual common sense) must be scrutinized. We do this scrutiny best by asking some questions.
What does CR knows about common sense when in his letter he gives the impression that Norton is contending that dead people actually voted, when common sense should tell him that what Norton was saying, must have been saying, and must be understood to have been saying is that some PPP/C electors who voted on March 2nd, 2020, ALSO VOTED for persons deceased, but whose name remained on the bloated OLEs. What does CR knows about common sense, when he was the litigant who went to the High Court to prevent Gecom’s House to House registration exercise aimed at correcting an obviously bloated OLE of some 660,000 18-year and older electors, while common sense must have screamed at him telling him that it was more than a “statistical probability” (to use his favourite phrase); it was an obvious unreality, that in a population of some 750,000 ( Guyana being a country of historically young people majority population) it was AN IMPOSSIBILITY TO HAVE A GENUINE OLE of some 660,000. Yet it was his obsession that come hell or high water, Gecom was to conduct the 2020 GREs with that bloated OLE (the fact of the Courts’ ruling in his favour proves nothing but that in Court, legal technicalities can sometimes trump common sense – Lord Denning under his sub heading “ unusual commonsense” stubbornly decried and denounced such).
What does CR know about common sense (allied with common human experiences) when he, in his “statistical probability” gymnastic contortion, seeks to give the impression that the corruption of party agents at the place of polls, and corruptibility of party agents (being after all but humans with human frailties) is an impossibility! Every lawyer (be you criminal or civil law practitioner – CR is also a lawyer) knows from his/her practice, that humans are corruptible, can be corrupted. (I would submit, boldly, that among the party agents and POs there must have been (as the recount is revealing many) Charandass Persauds).
What does CR knows about common sense, when to embellish his argument, he draws a nonsensical correlation between “municipal elections” and the 2020 GREs, when common sense tells us (and we all know) that there is not, has never been, and arguable, will never be (generally at any rate and rarely exceptionally) an equal, a similar voter excitement or enthusiasm, and turn out in municipal elections, as there is (locally, regionally, internationally) for General/ National election. Comparing “municipal elections” (by reference to which CR makes the deduction that the PPP/C won the 2020 GRE- a manifest non sequitur) is like CR equating his wealth with that of the American Bill Gates, or the Amazon owner!
What does CR know about common sense which screams at him, is in his face, and he sees it not, and hears it not, to stop exposing and revealing his pathological dislike and angst for APNU+AFC (and by extension its leader President David. A. Granger) by the sheer tenor of his letters, and his litigation in Court, because such exposure and revelation (unwitting or intentional) shows, manifestly, that pathologically, he was not a “fit and proper” person to be Gecom Chairman, and that President Granger (as if endowed with Divine pre-science) exercised his constitutional “own deliberate judgement” with what, history will show to be historic consequentiality in condignly rejecting him as one of Jagdeo’s nominee for that vaunted constitutional office. The signs are ominous, to put it mildly.
What does CR know about common sense, when he disavows it in his misguided, misplaced theoretical fantasy with “ statistical probability”; when as a lawyer, he ought to know, that as Lord Reid once said in the House of Lords (“.. The life blood of the law is not logic but common sense”, Haughton v Smith (1973)] and that is why (lay men) juries are directed by Judges to apply their common sense when making finding of facts, and Judges when confronted by seemingly insuperable difficulties as to finding the intent when interpreting legislation, resort to common sense as did Lord Evershed, MR in the elction case of Knowles v. Zoological Society of London (1959)- interpretation of the words “:entitled to vote” in aby-law].
And how can CR accuse Basil Williams SC, of peddling “nonsense” as regards the learned Attorney General’s rejection (with which in my letter I have concurred “ Nandlall’s argument must be rejected” GC, on-line Friday 29th May, 2020) of the PPP/C (more particularly Anil Nandlall) contention that Gecom has no jurisdiction under its enabling Order to resolve irregularities/ anomalies exposed in the national recount, when there can be no greater nonsense that the PPP/C argument and approach to this matter that BY AND UNDER the selfsame order (to which it agreed) which enables Gecom to disregard (or at any rate put in temporary abeyance) Mingo’s (the RO of Region four) declaration which effectively makes the APNU+AFC the winner of the 2020 GREs, GECOM, has, for some inexplicable reason, disabled and denied itself the power to consider and deliberate upon allegations of irregularities/anomalies which, as it must be obvious, is the very raison d’ etre for PPP/C objection to Gecom’s reliance on Mingo’s declaration. A greater, confusion, obfuscation and volte face there cannot be.
Readers, observe that I have disdainfully, said nothing about CRs self-righteous notion of the incorruptibility of the PPP/Cs executives, which needs only to be stated, to be rejected. And as to Nandlall’s distasteful use of “misfits and miscreants” in his June 1st, 2020 letter, I recommend that he reads Adam Harris’ OP-ED “Beware the Person who cries the loudest” GC Sunday 31st May, 2020.
En passant, I need not say much in relation to a letter (which has been brought to my attention) by learned counsel Nandlall under caption: “Constitution entrust High Court with exclusive jurisdiction to determine lawful conduct of elections, Gecom has no role” SN, Monday 1st June, 2020. The reader is referred to my Friday 29 letter. Suffice to say that a provision in the constitution cannot, in law, be unconstitutional nor can constitutionality be divisible, or seerable. Article 162 (1) (b) under which Gecom (in my consistent view has wrongly arrogated to itself the disputed power, for the time being, has delayed Mr. Granger’s assumption of the Presidency consequent upon the holding of the 2020 GREs and Region 4 ROs declaration, is as much part and parcel of the 1980 Constitution of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana as the other 231 articles (albeit, of course, not necessarily of equal constitutional value as those entrenched by the framers with the requirement of a referendum for their alteration) Article 163 is NOT one of those eleven (11) deepest entrenched provisions/ articles. For those of us who understands the intricacies of constitutional law, article 163 has no deeper constitutional value than article 162. In a subsequent letter (perhaps) I may elucidate as to why Nandlall’s preoccupation with the “exclusive jurisdiction” of the High Court is somewhat misguided, as exclusive there is intended to indicate that the Court of Appeal has no original jurisdiction in Election Petition matters (contrast article 177).
I end with this: “fairness” as prescribed by article 162 (1) (b) of the Constitution bears no constitutional definition. Fairness cannot be a matter of ephemeral political expediency or convenience. And every Lawyer (including Ram, Nandlall, Ramkarran SC) knows that it is, and must be, for Gecom to determine for itself what the delivery of that “fairness” requires in the context of the present election hiatus. Gecom cannot be expected to retreat into a state of regulatory agoraphobia.
Regards,
Maxwell E. Edwards
Source: https://issuu.com/guyanachroniclee-paper/docs/guyana_chronicle_epaper_06_04_2020