July 7th, 2014 -- Team Unity has instructed its Counsel to appeal the judgment of the lone Justice of the Appellate Court, Justice Louise Bellman on the stay of proceedings in the Motion of No Confidence (MONC) case. Our Appeal will be made to the full Court comprising 3 Justices of Appeal sitting on the Court of Appeal. Justice Rmanhani delivered his ruling in which he found interalia that Members of Parliament had a constitutional right to bring and to have debated a MONC in priority to other Parliamentary matters.
The status of the law has not changed. The ruling of Justice Ramdhani remains the law of the land. It binds the government as it does every citizen.
Team Unity opposed the application for a stay of the proceedings before the trial judge pending the appeal by the Speaker for the simple reason that the respondents have not advanced any proper justification for such an extraordinary measure which, on its face, interferes with our right of access to the Court.
We respectfully submit that the justice of the case requires that all outstanding matters be proceeded with, due dispatch. There should be an urgent conclusion of the trial.
The government propagandists have sought to make win out of the granting of the Appeal and stay of execution. There is no win for the government here. The right to appeal is a fundamental part of our jurisprudence and Team Unity never objected to the Speaker exercising that right. Team Unity is concerned that there is no need to stay proceedings as the country has waited too long for the Motion of No Confidence to be called and a delay in the proceedings will only lead to a further undermining of our constitutional democracy and a further loss of confidence in the integrity of Parliament.
Only an illegitimate government afraid of testing its legitimacy in Parliament would seek to delay a determination of MONC. Only an illegitimate government that has become a fugitive from the people will want to prolong the proceedings before the COURT rather than take them to the people via fresh general elections.
The government is clutching at straws and the Speaker continues to disgrace himself by these subterfuges and delay tactics. The government propagandists try to make a mountain out of a mole hill when it says that is case met the minimum threshold. The fact that a case met a minimum threshold to be heard provides no predictor of its likelihood of success. No more than a case at Preliminary Inquiry which is forwarded to trial can be predicted to succeed at a substantive trial.
Nothing before the Court prevents the government from tabling and debating the MONC in the National Assembly. That is the settled view of the High Court in its February 12, 2014 judgment. It is the view proffered by eminent constitutional jurists Charles Wilkin QC, Emile Ferdinand, QC, Tapley Seaton QC, long before Ramdhani’s judgment in February 2014. We submit nothing has changed.
The government having lost its legitimacy and its right to govern is clutching at straws. The people of St. Kitts and Nevis are not fooled by this illegitimate regime.
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