GUYANA HIGH Court Judge Justice Claudette Singh has created history by ruling that the 1997 polls in that CARICOM state are null and void. This is the first time that a judge in the Commonwealth has nullified a whole national election. So unusual is the ruling that both the petitioner, the Opposition PNC, and the respondent, the ruling PPP/Civic are claiming not to have lost in the ruling.
Senior Counsel for the respondent told the media that the fact that court did not say that the irregularities were of such magnitude to affect the election results showed that the petitioner's case did not succeed. He further pointed out that although the elections have been set aside, the judge had not ruled that the government is illegal. Indeed the PPP/Civic government has sought to "make it abundantly clear that the government is not illegal and has never been illegal and the court has so ruled".
In contradiction, Senior Counsel for the petition has declared that "factually, the petitioner won and legally and constitutionally the petitioner won, because all the factual issues were determined in favour of the petitioner".
The Judge herself has declared that the purpose of the petition was not to put any party in office, noting that fresh elections were already set for March 19 in a compromise deal between the governing PPP/Civic and the Opposition PNC in the wake of riots which followed the controversial 1997 elections.
The constitutional implications of the ruling are intriguing. Justice Singh nullified the elections on two counts: Parliament had no right to legislate special voter identification cards, a unanimous Parliamentary decision but which in the Judge's opinion violated Articles 58 and 59 of the 1980 Constitution.
And, secondly, there were "massive" irregularities, although the Judge was "unable to make a positive finding whether those unlawful acts or omissions, per se, might have affected the results..." The Guyanese Judiciary is challenging the constitutionality of an act of the Legislature in a rare display of the separation and balance of powers built into Parliamentary democracy.
Our own country, infamous for electoral "irregularities", and the rest of the democratic world await with more than passing interest the full outworking of Justice Singh's unprecedented ruling in Guyana. When the dust has settled we hope that Parliamentary democracy will be the real winner.
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