Dear Editor,
I write regarding the letter captioned “Ramkarran’s invoked Articles 59 and 159 of the Constitution does not preclude the implementation of biometrics” by Lincoln Lewis” (Stabroek News February 17, 2025) in which he writes “Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Chairperson, retired Justice Claudette Singh S.C., is inappropriately hiding behind legal technicalities to avoid implementing biometrics in the upcoming General and Regional Elections. Singh’s position is further bolstered by her legal counterpart, Ralph Ramkarran S.C, yet both are fully aware that laws are not immutable.”
I am not aware of the legal qualification of Mr Lewis and his expertise in making his determination on this matter. However, It is well known that both Justice Claudette Singh (retired) and Mr Ralph Ramkarran are eminently qualified legal minds. The former is a retired senior member of the judiciary with decades of experience as a judge and the latter, a Senior Counsel, with decades of experience as an Attorney. The former was appointed Chairperson of GECOM by then President David Granger who wanted someone fit to be a judge and after rejecting eighteen names submitted to him by then Leader of the Opposition, Mr Bharat Jagdeo. Earlier, in 2017 President Granger had appointed her as a Senior Counsel, one of only three women accorded that designation in Guyana up to that time.
I believe Guyanese will find it difficult to reconcile Mr Lewis’s view now on Justice Singh with what he wrote in a letter captioned “Justice Claudette Singh-the most consequential judge in the history of Guyana’s elections” (Guyana Chronicle, May 30, 2020. In that letter he states “Justice Singh may not have been accorded the honour of being appointed Chief Justice of Guyana even though she was due, eminently qualified and experienced to so do. She was denied not because another was better than her. Rather, she was denied because in presiding over the first elections petition ever filed in the history of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, she embraced the full tenets of her profession allowing Lady Justice to rule without fear or favour, breaking historical ground in our judicial system, to vitiate an election declaring Janet Jagan President in 1997”.
Regarding Justice Singh’s decision in that case, an article by Attorney Jamela A. Ali in the January/February 2001 issue of AL-BANYAN, a CIOG newsletter, states “It was reported that when the judge delivered her judgment in open court she said that the elections were “vitiated”. However, on page 77 of the written judgment the learned judge only made two declarations as follows:
(i) “that Act 22/97 is ultra vires, null and void Articles 59 and 159 of the Constitution.
(ii) That the 1997 elections were not conducted in accordance with the provisions of the Representation of the People Act Chapter 1:03 and articles 59 and 159 of the Constitution of Guyana.”
It seems to me, a non-legal mind, that the opinions of the GECOM Chairperson, Retired Justice Claudette Singh, and Senior Counsel Ralph Ramkarran are consistent with the decision by then Justice Claudette Singh in the 1997 elections petition case. So Retired Justice Claudette Singh, as Chairperson of GECOM is being flayed now by Mr Lewis for taking a stand that is consistent with her decision as a judge, a decision that was praised by him in 2020.
Harry Hergash
