Court of Appeal reserves decision in election matter

The Court of Appeal has reserved its decision in a matter related to a citizen’s challenge of the conduct of the last general election.

Chief Justice Sir Patterson Cheltenham said on Wednesday that the panel will at a later date rule on whether it will strike out the grounds of appeal filed by attorney-at-law Lalu Hanuman against a High Court judge’s ruling not to delay the January 19, 2022 polls.          

Hanuman, representing Philip Catlyn of the Barbados Sovereignty Party, is appealing Justice Cicely Chase’s January 18, 2022 decision to dismiss the last-minute application for an injunction to postpone the election. 

Catlyn had argued that thousands of people who were required to self-isolate during the COVID-19 pandemic were disenfranchised by not being able to vote, but Justice Chase ruled that the court had no jurisdiction to hear the matter and it would have to be heard by an elections court.

Hanuman appealed the decision but attorneys for the respondents – Alrick Scott, KC who is representing President Dame Sandra Mason, and Roger Forde, KC, appearing on behalf of the Attorney General’s Office – have asked the Court of Appeal to strike out the grounds.

On Wednesday, Hanuman made submissions justifying his grounds of appeal, which included that Justice Chase’s decision was erroneous on a point of law and erroneous on a point of fact, and that the matter raised fundamental public interest issues.

“The grounds of appeal that are listed there have to be read conjunctively with the details of the findings of fact and law that are being challenged which go into greater details as to the nature of the challenge,” he said.

“So for the respondents to say, as they did at the last hearing, that they did not know what findings of fact or law were being challenged is, with all due respect to them, a fallacious statement. Everything is there, Sir,” Hanuman asserted, referring to the last hearing in mid-March when he was given
additional time to respond to submissions from the respondents’ counsel.

However, Forde stuck to his guns that Hanuman’s grounds were too vague and general. 

He insisted that the attorney had not separated the findings of fact from the law in arriving at the proposed grounds.

“Although they are separate, you have to ground your appeal around the challenges, but the challenges are not the grounds. So, when he says that the decision is erroneous on a point of law, what law? He should say that, [for example], the learned trial judge misdirected herself or erred in law in interpreting section ‘blank’ of the Controversies Act, so we know where to go,” he submitted to the panel of appeal judges that also comprised Justices Margaret Reifer and Jefferson Cumberbatch. 

Scott, meantime, said that if Hanuman was serious about amending his grounds of appeal it would have been appropriate to do so formally, in writing, rather than orally. 

He argued that until there was a formal application before the appeal judges, the court had no way of knowing if the proposed grounds could succeed.
(EJ)