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| GUYANATIMESGY.COM

GuySuCo gets $250M from NICIL

The cash-strapped Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) was given a lifeline on Wednesday when the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) credited its account with a bailout of $250 million.

This comes weeks after GuySuCo announced that it did not have money to meet its basic expenditure and the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) expressing fear that the lack of funds may bring operations to a halt.

GuySuCo’s Board Chairman, John Dow relayed the company’s woes to caretaker President David Granger via a letter in May. He indicated that the Corporation had only received just about $9.7 billion of the promised $30 billion that was secured for the industry by the Government-run NICILSpecial Purpose Unit (SPU).

The letter also outlined that GuySuCo did not have the necessary cash to meet basic expenditure such as salaries, maintenance, and bare essentials. It further revealed that it was also $2.1 billion in debt without any sign of funding in the near future.

Compounding the situation, according to Dow, is the backlog of some $21 billion owed to GuySuCo’s creditors.

Elaborating on the sugar industry’s predicament, Dow notified Granger that it was unlikely that the company’s creditors would extend the facility further and “our inability to pay creditors in time has resulted in many of our most experienced contractors being unwilling to tender for GuySuCo projects”.

However, one day later, Finance Minister Winston Jordan informed that the Treasury was too broke to provide any immediate assistance.

According to Jordan, “the prevailing national circumstances, coupled with the challenges of COVID-19 and a reduced national income, render the Treasury incapable of providing a bailout to GuySuCo”.

However, Jordan’s comments were highly criticised by GAWU and the Guyanese populace at large, who all questioned the financial status of the Treasury. The bankrupted state of the treasury caused massive backlash to Granger and Jordan on their strategy of managing the country’s finances. To compound the issue, the Bank of Guyana, as part of its statutory requirements, published in the Official Gazette, a Statement of Assets and Liabilities for the country. This showed that the country’s general reserves had been depleted to $0, but the account is also now running an overdraft to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

After much public outcry and criticism over the state of affairs, Granger

on June 14 announced that GuySuCo would be given a bailout that week. That was almost two weeks ago.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, NICIL also said that it would, in the very near future, make available a further $750 million to GuySuCo.

On Wednesday also, GAWU, in a statement to the media, said that the apparent deliberate delay of the funds “undoubtedly has pushed the Corporation to the precipice”.

Since taking office in 2015, the A Partnership for National Unity/ Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) has fired thousands of sugar workers. The Skeldon, Rose Hall and East Coast Demerara (Enmore) Estates were closed in December 2017, leaving thousands of workers jobless. The Wales Sugar Estate was the first to shut down in 2016. Only three estates are currently in operation – Albion, Blairmont and Uitvlugt.

Brazilian man crushed to death by rock at Puruni Mines

Police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of a 55-yearold Brazilian who was on Tuesday reportedly

crushed to death by a morethan-200-pounds rock at Puruni Mines, Region Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni).

Dead is Jose Cicero Ferreira Pereira, who was employed as a maintenance worker at Hard Rock Mining Company.

According to Police information, the man and a colleague were working at the top of the shaft section of an underground tunnel, which was about 80 feet beneath the earth’s surface.

The duo was pumping out water when the marrack pump “choked”; as a result, Pereira was lowered into the tunnel by a remote winch and he proceeded to clear the marrack hole.

His colleague claimed that after 15 minutes had elapsed and Pereira did not signal him to be winched up, he sounded the alarm and called out for the man, but got no response.

As such, he then notified the site’s manager, who was then lowered into the tunnel.

There, the Brazilian national was found lying facedown in an unconscious state with a rock weighing in excess of 200 pounds resting on his head.

He was brought to the top of the tunnel, where he died.

The body was taken to the Bartica Regional Hospital. A post-mortem examination will be conducted as investigations continue.

To judge or not to judge…

…that is the CCJ’s task

Your Eyewitness should get extra pay for battle duty. Well, he wasn’t actually engaged in the battle, but he might as well have been. He now understands the challenge of those reporters who’re dispatched to be embedded in units thrown into combat. He’s talking, of course, about having to look at the entire all-day hearing on the Opposition parties’ appeal to the CCJ on the PNC’s illegal grab for power.

This was war all right – of the old-fashioned kind, when armies would line up in formation against each other, then chaaaaarge!! Or like gladiators in Roman Coliseums duelling in front of the nobility. All the while observing rules about how exactly to destroy the fella in front of you, but destroying him anyway. Kinda like how warfare is conducted inside boxing rings, with an umpire to ensure the rules of engagement are observed.

The lines were drawn, the troops were massed in their uniforms, and the umpires rang the bell to start the fray; to pause it so as to allow the wounded to be carried off the field and regroup, and finally to announce that next Wednesday at 3 pm they’ll announce who won the battle.

The weapons were the mouths of the lawyers – many of them foreign mercenaries - and their bullets were their words…and these certainly flew fast and furious. First up was the Trini Mendes, who’s become something of a fixture in the legal arena of recent. He quite endeared himself to the local spectators who witnessed the last gladiatorial contest when he brought a courtly charm to the fight by addressing the Chief Justice as “Milady”. You just expected him to throw his coat over a puddle for her to step over!!

Anyhow, Mendes threw the PPP partisans for a loop when he agreed that, technically, on an explication of Art 177 (4) – as argued by the PNC – the CCJ didn’t have jurisdiction to listen to the case on appeal from the Court of Appeal (CoA). But in an unusual manoeuvre, he then slyly pointed out that the CoA, in fact, never decided the case that was brought to them by Miss David on the grounds laid out by the exclusionary Art 177 (4). So, the CCJ had wrongly arrogated jurisdiction – and this could be challenged at the CCJ!!

The CCJ could rectify matters by throwing, out by reinstating, the status quo ante!! His hapless opponent, another Trini, John Jeremie, weakly blustered that the CoA did in fact have jurisdiction even though he couldn’t find a single precedent in the entire Commonwealth to back up his (hypothetical) contention!!

That a presidential election could be challenged before the President was declared!!

…what might it be

It became pretty clear early in the duel that the CCJ’s gonna assume jurisdiction. Maybe because the PNC had taken them for fools the last time they came before them?? You remember when the eminent jurists took the PNC at face value, told them what the law was on the NCM - and the PNC kicked them in the nuts by hanging on for another year? And counting!!!

So how’ll they take jurisdiction? Well, one of the lawyers for a small party referred to Marbury v Madison, didn’t he?? That’s the foundational 1803 US Supreme Ct case where they CREATED the power of “judicial review”. Once the constitution’s ever violated, they could then strike down any statute, law or governmental actions emanating from the violation. The CCJ’s questions posing hypotheticals that would have the working of the present laws result in great hardships to Guyanese suggest they’ll invoke “natural law” to justify this.

Then, of course, they could always invoke Constitutional violation of its “basic structure”!!

…the PNC don’t care

But it wasn’t smooth sailing after Justice Marshall introduced Judicial Review. There was the famous case of Andrew Jackson asking how many troops the Supreme Court had to enforce their decision?

That’ll be Granger’s reaction.

President must be elected before COA’s jurisdiction invoked – CCJ hears

…court being asked to determine issue which has not yet arisen …as sparks fly during arguments, ruling set for July 8

It was a battle of wits the Representation of the High Court that has “excluon Wednesday as the People’s Act sets this out. sive jurisdiction” to address Caribbean Court of Mendes further noted matters in relation to the Justice began hearing arthat in order for David to invalidity of an election; howguments on the appeal filed voke the Court of Appeal’s ever, this has to be done via by the Peoples Progressive jurisdiction, her submisan elections petition after Party Civic (PPP/C) in the sions would have had to the results of that election Mohammed Ifraan Ali et question the qualification/ have been declared and a al v Eslyn David et al case validity of the president. government is sworn in. against a decision handed Moreover, Mendes noted Mendes pointed out that down by Guyana’s Appeal that a president must be both the Court of Appeal and Court; and eventually, July elected before the court’s juthe High Court cannot have 8 was set to hand down risdiction is invoked. jurisdiction over “the same judgement. The Trinidadian lawyer thing.” His argument is that

The hearing kicked off pointed out that the only if the Court of Appeal exwith Trinidadian Senior President at the time of the ceeded its jurisdiction, then Counsel Douglas Mendes laying out his reasons why the Court of Appeal exceeded its jurisdiction when it interpreted Article 177 (2) of the Constitution to say “more votes are cast” should mean “more ‘valid’ votes are cast”. Mendes is among a battery of lawyers representing the applicants, PPP/C General Secretary Bharrat Jagdeo and Presidential Candidate Dr Irfaan Ali. Citing the Eslyn David submissions which the Court of Appeal had ruled on, he pointed out that they failed to reach the threshold for jurisdiction under Article 177(4) of the Constitution. He noted that while references were made to Order 60 of 2020, it cannot be applicable. “That is how they seek to transparently connect what the real complaint was, which is the failure of GECOM to determine a final credible count with Article 177…there is nothing in 177 that tells you how to determine (more votes cast), so it’s plain you’d have to look somewhere else to figure out how to determine more votes cast,” he said, noting that T&T Senior Counsel Douglas Mendes appeared on behalf of Dr Irfaan Ali and Bharrat Jagdeo case was President David Granger, who’s election was since 2015. Moreover, the general precedent is that validity of an election of a president is determined after said president is elected. “You have to determine an election as quickly as possible, and the general principle is you determine it as quickly as possible. The principle is you determine validity after an election is (completed), so the country can settle down and you have a government in place,” Mendes said, citing case law to bolster his arguments. Further, Mendes also argued strongly that it is the the finality clause excluding the matter from judicial review by the CCJ does not apply to the case. Lacks reference to the validity Attorney-at-law Timothy Jonas, who appeared for Mark France, Josh Kanhai and Lennox Shuman, referred to David’s affidavit and the fact that it lacks reference to the validity of the elections. According to him, David conflated the issue of the credibility of the election with Order 60 of 2020. “That is the tenuous thread by which the Court of Appeal, having said it needed to construe the order, decides it is going to give an interpretation of Article 177(2). If this court agrees that all the issues in her affidavit pertains to a complaint that GECOM conducted a recount and then instructed Lowenfield to file a report using the recount numbers, then that conflation which led to judgements from two judges in the Court of Appeal is without contemplation. “The only paragraph that I have been able to discern in this entire application and affidavit, which speaks to a credible vote and credibility of the March 2 election, is paragraph 27,” Jonas Attorney-at-Law Kashir Khan

told the court.

Meanwhile, Attorney-atLaw Kashir Khan supported arguments that the David case pre-empted the natural course of events. According to him, the Representation of the People’s Act sets out a clear pathway before a president can be deemed to be elected.

“When we look at the entire construct of the Representation of the People’s Act, we have a situation where this court is being asked to make a determination based on an issue which, for all intents and purposes, has not yet arisen.

“There has been no declaration, no extraction, the entire construct of the Representation of the People’s Act is such that that process is a necessary step towards getting to the point where somebody gets elected.”

Following hours of lawyers trading barbs on matters of jurisdiction, as well as the substantive appeal, the CCJ eventually set July 8 to hand down its judgment. In the interim, they will study the submissions made by the lawyers.

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