The Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) Wednesday criticized as premature the decision of Guyana’s Attorney General, Anil Nandlall to release on its social media page, an embargoed ruling regarding an election petition.
“This is totally unacceptable and further action of the Court will be contemplated. For example, is it possible in cases like this to send an advanced copy in Guyana? I mean this is really serious business and we cannot have it, and this is something we will discuss in a broader form,” said Justice Jacob Witt.
On the Facebook page of the attorney general on Tuesday, it was disclosed that the “CCJ upholds our submissions in Petition No.99: Court of Appeal decision reversed…the people won again.”
All of the attorneys in the election petition matter were provided with an advanced embargoed copy of the CCCJ’s decision that they were asked not to share.
Justice Witt said the Facebook post created the impression that the Attorney General had privileged access to information from the CCJ, while his colleague Justice Maureen Rajnauth-Lee said she was concerned about the adverse impact of the release on the Attorney General’s Facebook page.
“Apart from the apology and all those other things that I have heard today, I am very, very concerned about the impact of the integrity of the court, and I would like Counsel here to come up with something that will remedy that impact,” Justice Rajnauth-Lee said.
The CCJ, which is Guyana’s highest court, said it expects Nandlall to apologize publicly on his Facebook page, based on a commitment by Guyana’s Solicitor General Nigel Hawke, who told the court that it was a mistake by an administrator of the Attorney General’s Facebook page and there was no attempt to bring the Court into disrepute.
“Your Honours, first we would like to place our sincere apology to the members of the Court and to our colleagues. But what transpired as I have instructed, and I should say that the Honourable Attorney General was travelling on Government’s business to Barbados and, I am instructed that an unauthorized note, the judgement wasn’t published, unauthorized note was published on his Facebook page,” the Solicitor General said.
But attorney, Selwyn Pieters, said Anil Nandlall’s apology was not accepted as it has injured the image of the court.
“What that premature release did- it was shared all over the Internet- what it did was put the administration of justice into disrepute because if Your Honours staff read the comments, it almost seem like the Attorney General had some privy,” said Peters who also practices in Canada.
He said in Canada lawyers are required to give a written undertaking that they would not release embargoed judgements.
The attorney general was not present during the hearing.
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