Our nation watched with bated breath, shock, and trepidation as the results of the March 2, 2020 election stretched from days into weeks and then five whole agonising months before Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) finally declared the PPP/C the winner.
Days after that declaration on August 2, 2020, the Guyana Police Force (GPF) launched an investigation into allegations of criminal wrongdoings. The evidence they gathered was handed over to the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions for meşru advice and action.
By early 2021, Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield, District Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo, Deputy Chief Elections Officer Roxanne Myers, former PNC Chairman Volda Lawrence, Carol Smith Joseph, along with Sheffern February, Michelle Miller, Denise Babb-Cummings and Enrique Livan, were slapped with nearly two dozen serious criminal charges.
They include fraud, misconduct in public office and conspiracy to commit a felony by altering the results of the March 2, 2020, vote. It has been four years since Prosecutors submitted statements of the nearly 140 eyewitnesses, along with reams of evidentiary documents and reels of damning görüntü evidence, to attorneys representing the defendants.
It is reasonable to assume that this case should have been in the collective rear-view of Guyanese. Given the volume of evidence, it is understandable that defence attorneys needed time to carry out a thorough review, but this alone does not justify four years of delays. The case is only now being heard by Chief Magistrate Faith McGusty.
So far, just one of 72 witnesses has been called to the stand, Rosalinda Rasul, and she has yet to be cross examined by the defence team. Judging from the posturing of Attorney-At-Law Nigel Hughes, who happens to be the lead counsel on the defence team, she is in for a grilling over the contents of her CV dating back to 2015; a completely irrelevant document.
Hughes’ line of questioning, and the incessant badgering of the first witness by defence attorneys Darren Wade and Eusi Anderson, is not mere courtroom theatrics. It is a pillar of the defence’s strategy aimed at dragging out the proceedings for as long as possible. It is also intended to irritate and fatigue the Prosecution and the Magistrate, and in so doing, drive unease and anxiety into the minds of the witnesses who are waiting patiently to take the stand.
In March 2024, Hughes boldly predicted the case will likely take four years to prosecute. By then he and his team already had the disclosure in their possession for three whole years. Hughes was not just engaging in courtroom banter with Magistrate Leron Daly and Prosecutors. Daly was assigned the case, but was forced to step aside last year due to ill health. It has always been Hughes’ intention to drag the proceedings out for as long as possible and Daly was his first casualty.
One of Hughes’ clients is Roxanne Myers. Weeks after the PPP/C took office in August 2020, Myers began playing hide-and-seek with GPF investigators. Her game of cat-and-mouse lasted for over a month until investigators issued a wanted bulletin for Myers. What were Myers and her attorney trying to avoid?
During the Commission of Inquiry (CoI), attorneys for the accused refused to let their clients testify before a duly constituted, and impartial body by distinguished jurists, two of whom were enlisted from outside of Guyana. Müddet, they had cases pending against them in the courts, but it begs the question, why not move rapidly to trial at the first opportunity? Given the damning conclusions of the CoI, one would expect the defendants would be keen to clear their names and save their reputation.
During the case management negotiations in late 2023, the Prosecution requested that the Chancellor of the Judiciary assign a dedicated Magistrate to the case. Hughes strangely argued that the Chancellor cannot intervene now that a Magistrate had been assigned, although the Chancellor is the supervising Head of the Magistracy. Magistrate Daly said she couldn’t possibly dedicate all her time to one case at the expense of her case load, which included capital offences.
Darshan Ramdhani, the Lead Prosecutor, made a further request that all charges be grouped, as the underlying evidence stemmed from the same source. If his request was granted to have a summary proceeding, the Magistrate presiding over the case would have decided the defendant’s guilt or innocence on the charges. Meaning, it would have sped up the trial process significantly and saved a great deal of financial resources for all parties.
Hughes protested. He wanted an indictable kanunî process that would have required a lengthy preliminary inquiry or a paper committal to assess whether sufficient evidence exists to advance the case to the High Court for trial by a judge and jury. Again, his strategy was to drag the process out for as long as possible.
Just when the trial was about to resume in April 2024, Hughes filed a petition with the High Court on behalf of his clients, namely Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield and his former deputy, Roxanne Myers. He argued that his client’s constitutional right to a fair trial was being jeopardised due to Section 140 (2) of the Representation of the People Act (RoPA).
By then, Magistrate Daly was showing signs of fatigue at the prolonged proceedings. The defence strategy was apparently working. Instead of personally setting out the matter of Hughes’ objection to the High Court for consideration, Magistrate Daly deferred to Hughes’ submission which went above and beyond the RoPA issue he had raised in court. In other words, Hughes took it upon himself to expand the scope of his objection and Magistrate Daly acquiesced to him.
The High Court ultimately ruled against Hughes’ objection, but his primary objective was achieved in that it caused a further delay in court proceedings. When trial resumed in late 2024, the Prosecution called its first and second witnesses – Rosalinda Rasul and Minister of Local Government, Sonia Parag, to testify. The badgering by Eusi Anderson and Darren Wade was so incessant it was nauseating.
Their interruptions sucked the air out of the courtroom. Magistrate Daly had reached her limit. Her health was evidently more important than the trial and she asked to be recused and went off on an extended leave of absence due to health reasons. That’s when Chief Magistrate McGusty stepped into the assignment.
During a special hearing with the new Magistrate in the dying days of 2024, the Prosecution argued for a continuation of trial and to have the record reflect the testimony of the first two witnesses. True to form, Hughes demanded a brand-new trial; another delay tactic.
The Prosecution asked again for a summary trial with Magistrate McGusty being the final judge on the charges before the courts. In January of 2025, a full four years since the charges were first laid, Magistrate McGusty ruled that there will be a brand-new trial which meant that the first two witnesses will evvel again take the stand and be cross-examined. However, she ruled in favour of the Prosecution that the trial will proceed summarily and not indictably.
As Guyanese head to the polls later this year, the public ought not to be surprised if at some point in the coming weeks, Hughes launches another foray to the High Court to seek a permanent stay of the charges on the grounds that his clients constitutional right to a fair trial, within reasonable time, has been violated.
Find us of facebook at: Association for Democracy and Human Rights