Elections should be called now- Charrandass Persaud’s attorney

Sanjeev Datadin, the Attorney representing government defector Charrandass Persaud has said elections should be called immediately, following the rulings delivered by the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) on Tuesday.

“Parliament should be dissolved now, the President should dissolve Parliament and we should go to an election,” Datadin said to reporters outside of the Appeal Court after the ruling.

He noted that the Government needs to accept the rulings and “play by rules” since failure to do so will set a precedence for future such cases.

“The average citizens, you and I, need that our leaders must obey the law, it’s very clear,” he added.

Charrandass Persaud moved to the CCJ to challenge Guyana’s Appeal Court ruling of March 22 that the No-Confidence motion was not validly passed and that his vote was invalid by virtue of him being a dual citizenship.

The CCJ ruled that the December 21 No Confidence motion was properly passed with 33 votes in the 65-seat National Assembly.

According to Datadin, he communicated with Persaud and he is pleased with the court’s ruling.

“He is pleased with the ruling, he was confident of what he had done was lawful…he is relieved that the court has also said that that is so,” Datadin related.

Asked whether his client will be returning to Guyana, Datadin responded in the affirmative but said he is unsure of when.

The CCJ also ruled on Tuesday that the appointment of the Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) breached the Constitution.

While this did not have anything to do with his case, the Attorney said he still “finds favour with it.”

He said hopefully, the process for the appointment of a new Chairman of GECOM will be done quickly.

“The unilateral appointment was bad, it was retrograde, it was a reversal of things, it was a representative of what we were trying to avoid that there be some consensus,” he said.

The CCJ will on Monday hear from the attorneys on what consequential orders it could make.