Wes­ley Gib­bings

New­ly-elect­ed pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, Se­nior Coun­sel Seenath Jairam, had his first day in court yes­ter­day since be­ing elect­ed to the post, not at the lo­cal bar but in the Guyana ju­ris­dic­tion as a lawyer rep­re­sent­ing the Don­ald Ramo­tar ad­min­is­tra­tion. The Guyana-born at­tor­ney was elect­ed to head the as­so­ci­a­tion last Fri­day in a con­test which saw him vic­to­ri­ous over fel­low Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan and Stan­ley Mar­cus.

Jairam was re­tained by the Guyana Gov­ern­ment in a case which chal­lenges the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of cuts in the bud­get for the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, cour­tesy Op­po­si­tion amend­ments dur­ing the April 2012 na­tion­al bud­get de­bate. The com­bined Op­po­si­tion has a one-seat ma­jor­i­ty in the 65-seat Na­tion­al As­sem­bly.

The Op­po­si­tion Part­ner­ship for Na­tion­al Uni­ty (AP­NU) and Al­liance for Change (AFC) had op­posed sig­nif­i­cant al­lo­ca­tions to the of­fice of the Pres­i­dent and im­posed deep cuts on sev­er­al line items, in­clud­ing state me­dia ex­pen­di­ture, ad­vi­so­ry func­tions and a free lap­top pro­gramme.

The rul­ing Peo­ple's Pro­gres­sive Par­ty (PPP) is con­tend­ing that the sole pre­rog­a­tive of the par­lia­men­tary Op­po­si­tion is ei­ther to sup­port or op­pose bud­get pro­pos­als and not to im­pose cuts as oc­curred dur­ing the bud­get de­bate. Le­gal ar­gu­ments be­gan be­hind closed doors and be­fore Chief Jus­tice Ian Chang in George­town yes­ter­day. Lo­cal jour­nal­ists have been try­ing, un­suc­cess­ful­ly, to find out the lev­el of fees be­ing charged by Jairam and the Gov­ern­ment's le­gal team.