BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – FOLLOWING an approximate four-hour long court hearing in the ongoing boundaries commission case, lawyers representing both parties are anticipating this morning’s proceedings with bated breath as 74Justice Francis Belle is expected to rule on whether leave should be granted for a judicial review.
This leave was formally requested on Tuesday (Nov. 24) by Leader of the Opposition and Parliamentary Representative of the Concerned Citizens Movement (CCM) Hon. Mark Brantley along with Parliamentary Representative of the People’s Action Movement (PAM) Hon. Shawn Richards.
Concerns were raised about the function and composition of the Constituency Boundaries Commission, a body constitutionally mandated to review the number and delimitations of the Federations constituency boundaries, after last week’s resignation of two members. To this end, both members of parliament applied to seek an interim injunction to restrain the work of the CBC and to prohibit the use of any report emanating from that body.
During yesterday’s court proceedings, lead counsel representing both opposition parliamentarians, Constance Mitcham, stressed that Brantley was deprived of his right to appoint two members to the Commission and that Richards had a legitimate expectation to be treated fairly by the Commission during consultations.
In support of the November 24 application, Mitcham submitted a total of four affidavits: two from Brantley and Richards and one from each of the recently-resigned CBC members - Hon. Vance Amory and Senator Michael Perkins, both members of the CCM. The politicians gave supporting evidence bringing the work and composition of the Commission into question.
During the afternoon session, legal counsel representing the Governor-General, Attorney-General and the Supervisor of Elections, Arundranauth Gosai, asserted that the majority of the grounds put forward by Brantley and Richards are repeated from the grounds pleaded before Justice Errol Thomas in a related case. He added that the new grounds raised by the two parliamentarians are without base.
“Mark Brantley’s position is not well founded because he was not deprived of any right. The two members he appointed voluntarily resigned and he wrote to the Governor-General twice, and on neither of the two occasions did he make any suggestion as to the names of persons he wished to appoint to the Commission,” Gosai said.
As it relates to Richards’ grounds of unfair consultations, Gosai assessed the arguments within the application and opined that Richards’ arguments are “really no grounds”. He stressed that the PAM Parliamentarian failed to prove how the work of the Commission has or would cause him irreparable damage.
“The High Court cannot embark on the review of the decision of the CBC unless a decision of the tribunal is before the Court, because the review is really to show that the decision of the tribunal was arrived at by procedural unfairness of bias or bad faith or was based on improper purpose,” Gosai explained in an interview with this media house
Mitcham noted her disagreement with Gosai’s statements as she repeated that this is “just the preliminary point” and that the application exceeds what is necessary for such leave to be granted.
“[In] the threshold at this stage, to get leave for judicial review you only have to show that you have a triable issue, which means that the matter you are bringing to the court is not a frivolous and vexatious matter. So the process of getting leave to bring judicial review is for the court to weed out cases that are frivolous and only proceed with those that are serious,” she repeated.
Both parties remain hopeful that the ruling this morning would be in their favour. The proceedings continue at 11:00 a.m.
