ChrisRam.net

The CCJ Crisis: Its President Has Responded. Questions Remain.

The lengthy statement by CCJ President Justice Winston Anderson is an important development in a crisis which has damaged the integrity and perceived impartiality of the Court – hopefully not irreparably, but certainly for years to come, particularly if the existing leadership remains in place.

Justice Anderson deserves credit for responding publicly. He rejects allegations of panel fixing and improper attempts to influence judicial outcomes. His explanations deserve fair consideration, but cannot substitute for an independent examination of allegations made by five of the Court’s six other sitting judges.

Two of the controversies are of particular importance to Guyana. On the Mohamed extradition case, Justice Anderson does not directly answer Justice Jamadar’s specific allegation that he attempted to influence colleagues whose views differed from his. Unanimity in the eventual result does not answer an allegation about the integrity of the process by which that result was reached.

The other concerns Guyana’s Judiciary, for which the Constitution makes specific provision. Anderson now acknowledges that in October 2025 he privately sought to encourage agreement on the substantive appointments of Chancellor and Chief Justice, speaking separately with President Irfaan Ali and then Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton. He concedes that another course would have been better and that he might have confined himself to public commentary, as his predecessors had done.

This not only reflects poor judgment unbecoming of the holder of such an exalted judicial office, but raises the more important question whether the President of Guyana’s final appellate court should intervene in a constitutional process entrusted to the President and Leader of the Opposition of a Member State.

Significantly, Anderson sidesteps Norton’s more specific allegations: that he sought Norton’s agreement to particular appointments; said that he had participated in negotiations concerning then acting Chancellor Yonette Cummings-Edwards and sought to facilitate them; and told Norton that the President and others were waiting to swear in the proposed appointees, indicating when questioned that he had been with President Ali.

In a lengthy statement intended to answer the controversies surrounding him, omissions of that significance cannot simply be dismissed as oversight.

Nor can responsibility rest with Justice Anderson alone. At the political level, the circumstances demanded strict observance of the separation between Executive and Judiciary. Instead, President Ali appears to have lent support to an intervention by the President of the CCJ in a process which, according to Norton, encompassed the departure of the then acting Chancellor and the proposed appointment of Guyana’s two highest judicial officers.

Ali must – but won’t – explain his role in these serious matters. Who initiated the discussions? What was discussed? What did he understand Anderson’s role to be? Was the Attorney General consulted?

More fundamentally, if the President was prepared to engage the head of Guyana’s final appellate court in such an intervention at the apex of the judicial system, Guyanese are entitled to ask where he believes the boundary lies between legitimate executive action and interference with the Judiciary. If Ali is prepared to cross that boundary with the apex court, what assurance is there that it will be respected in the domestic courts?

Against this background, Guyana’s institutional responses are disappointing. The Bar Association concentrated on confidentiality and expressly declined to address the substance. That position will inevitably reinforce existing suspicions about its political independence.

For its part, Guyana’s judicial leadership associated itself with a regional statement which declined to address the merits while expressing grave concern about the breach of confidentiality. Given Guyana’s exceptional involvement, was there consultation within our Judiciary before its leadership joined that statement?

There is also an unavoidable issue of perception. In the 2018 presidential term-limits case, Justice Anderson was the lone dissenting judge in the CCJ’s six-to-one decision upholding Guyana’s constitutional term limits. His dissent was entirely within his judicial right and is not evidence of political bias. But his subsequent acknowledged intervention with Guyana’s political Executive inevitably causes that history to be viewed in a new and uncomfortable context.

The controversy also unfairly casts a shadow over the acting Chancellor and acting Chief Justice and their prospects for confirmation. Nothing disclosed establishes wrongdoing by either. That unfair consequence itself demonstrates why the appointment process should have been insulated from outside intervention.

Finally, the Guyana Bar Association and the regional judicial leadership elevated the leaking of confidential correspondence above grave allegations which the CCJ President’s lengthy statement has only partially addressed. There is no evidence that any of the five judges leaked the emails. The disclosure could have come from anyone with access. What matters is that the correspondence exposed an atmosphere harmful to the Court and the Region. The five judges did not create this crisis by raising these concerns. The crisis lay in the conditions that caused them to do so.

Justice Anderson’s statement is welcome but incomplete. It cannot be the final word.

Saturday, August 15, 2026

Mr. President,

The sinking of the MV Barima is, I believe, the worst maritime tragedy in our country’s history. Families have been devastated. Parents have lost children. Children have lost parents. Scores of ordinary Guyanese have perished. Survivors have endured unimaginable trauma. Every Guyanese shares their grief and extends heartfelt sympathy to all whose lives have been changed forever.

In times of grief, the nation expects leadership. In the hours immediately following the tragedy, Guyanese looked to the Government for clear information, decisive action and reassurance that every available resource had been mobilised. Instead, there was uncertainty, confusion, conflicting reports and official statements that raised as many questions as they answered. Attention appeared to shift too quickly from discovering what had happened to defending official action. That only added to the tragedy.

In any national disaster, Government’s first obligation is to activate a machinery capable of minimising further loss of life and damage to property, coordinating rescue efforts, providing timely and accurate information to anxious relatives – including through a dedicated hotline and ensuring that the public receives information that is accurate, consistent and credible. Only then can Government turn to the equally important task of establishing the truth.

That is precisely why Parliament enacted the Guyana Shipping Act, 1998. It recognised that when lives are lost in rivers or at sea, the search for truth cannot be left to official assurances or political debate. The Act itself is an elaborate piece of legislation establishing a statutory framework governing maritime safety, regulation and the independent investigation of marine casualties. It also separated the operation of vessels from their regulation by establishing the Maritime Administration as the country’s maritime regulator. My cursory reading of the Act is that it has been systematically ignored in practice. But that is a matter for another forum.

As the nation comes to terms with the scale of this tragedy, disturbing questions arise.

* Was the Barima properly maintained and operated by the Transport and Harbours Department?

* Had the Maritime Administration discharged its statutory responsibility to regulate and oversee the vessel’s safety to protect lives and limbs of passengers and crew?

* Were the vessel’s inspections, surveys and certificates current and fully compliant with the law?

* Had the Maritime Administration identified any deficiencies and, if so, what corrective action was required and taken?

* Did the Transport and Harbours Department comply with every statutory requirement governing passenger safety?

* How did the Minister, who bears responsibility for both the operator and the regulator, satisfy himself that each had properly discharged its separate statutory responsibilities?

* Did failures of operation, regulation, supervision or enforcement contribute to this disaster?

• Does this concentration of responsibility within a single ministry compromise the independence of the regulatory process?

I ask you not to regard these as political questions. They are legal and factual questions, and we deserve and expect honest and factual answers.

The purpose of an independent investigation is not to assign blame before the evidence is heard. It is to ensure that the evidence is gathered independently, examined objectively and reported publicly. That is how confidence is built. It is also how future tragedies are prevented.

Mr. President, public confidence does not exist in a vacuum. Many Guyanese still carry unanswered questions from previous national tragedies, including the Mahdia Dormitory Fire which cost the lives of twenty of our children. There is a widespread perception that official investigations too often fail to satisfy the reasonable expectation that every relevant fact will be exposed and every lesson learnt. Against that background, the handling of the Barima tragedy assumes even greater significance.

There is another matter that deserves urgent attention.

Our maritime legislation still contains penalties that belong to another era. Conduct capable of exposing passengers to grave danger attracts fines that are derisory by modern standards. In an era when Guyana has become one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, such penalties neither deter misconduct nor reflect the value that our society places upon human life.  That is a matter for Parliament to correct.

But where statutory penalties are inadequate, the responsibility of the State becomes correspondingly greater. The families of those who perished are entitled not merely to sympathy but to justice. If regulatory failures contributed to this tragedy, legal accountability cannot end with outdated fines imposed upon individuals. It must extend, where the law and the evidence justify it, to the public authorities charged with protecting those who entrusted their lives to the nation’s transport system.

Mr. President, the Barima must not be allowed to become another national tragedy remembered only for grief and unanswered questions. It should be remembered as the moment when your Administration demonstrated, by action rather than words, that in Guyana the rule of law is stronger than official convenience, party interest and the protection of personalities. The families of the victims deserve the truth. The people of Guyana deserve accountability. History will remember whether your Administration chose official reassurance or independent scrutiny.

I therefore respectfully urge you to declare an appropriate period of national mourning in honour of those who lost their lives. Thereafter, and without delay, to establish an independent Commission of Inquiry under the Guyana Shipping Act, 1998, and to allow it to discharge its mandate completely independently, free from interference or influence of any kind.

That, I believe, is the surest way to honour the dead, comfort the bereaved and restore public confidence in the administration of justice.

Respectfully,

Christopher Ram