Derek Achong

Three Ap­pel­late Judges are ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er their judg­ment in the con­tro­ver­sial ap­peal of two busi­ness­men and an in­sur­ance com­pa­ny chal­leng­ing the re­peal of Sec­tion 34 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Of­fences) Act on Wednes­day.The judges–Al­lan Men­don­ca, Pe­ter Ja­madar and Gre­go­ry Smith–re­served their judg­ment in ap­peal in Oc­to­ber last year, af­ter hear­ing lengthy sub­mis­sions from a bat­tery of lawyers in­clu­sive of four promi­nent British Queen's Coun­sel.

Through the ap­peal, busi­ness­men Steve Fer­gu­son and Ameer Edoo and in­sur­ance com­pa­ny Mar­itime Gen­er­al are con­test­ing the judg­ment of High Court Judge Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er who, in April last year, dis­missed all eight grounds raised by them in their bid to chal­lenge the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the re­peal.

Cen­tral to their ap­peal is their claim that the sud­den re­peal of the leg­is­la­tion al­most two years ago, breached the con­sti­tu­tion­al prin­ci­ple of the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers and their right to due process of law. They have al­so claimed that the re­peal was un­fair and was "dis­pro­por­tion­ate and un­just" be­cause of its ret­ro­spec­tive ef­fect.

In re­sponse, the State has al­leged that the re­peal was with­in Par­lia­ment's dis­cre­tion and as such the court does not have the ju­ris­dic­tion to re­verse it.As a sec­ondary is­sue in the con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion law­suit, the busi­ness­men and com­pa­ny took is­sue with the in­ter­ven­tion of Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard, SC, who wrote to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan ad­vis­ing the re­peal, af­ter he had re­ceived sev­er­al ap­pli­ca­tions un­der the leg­is­la­tion seek­ing an amnesty of the crim­i­nal charges.

Gas­pard, through his at­tor­ney, has sug­gest­ed that he was "du­ty bound" to in­ter­vene in the mat­ter be­cause of his im­por­tant role in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.