Guyana Pres­i­dent David Granger and his Cab­i­net must im­me­di­ate­ly re­sign and call gen­er­al elec­tions be­fore Sep­tem­ber 18.

This was es­sen­tial­ly the ef­fect of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ)'s de­ci­sion to up­hold the pas­sage of a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion in that coun­try's Na­tion­al As­sem­bly in De­cem­ber, last year.

De­liv­er­ing the court's fi­nal or­ders in the case, which was ini­tial­ly de­cid­ed on June 18, CCJ Pres­i­dent Adri­an Saun­ders yes­ter­day stat­ed that the pro­vi­sions of the coun­try's con­sti­tu­tion which deal with the con­se­quences of the pas­sage of such a mo­tion should be strict­ly fol­lowed.

As a re­sult, it did not set a date for the elec­tion.

"These pro­vi­sions need no gloss on the part of the court to ren­der them in­tel­li­gi­ble and work­able. Their mean­ing is clear and it is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of con­sti­tu­tion­al ac­tors in Guyana to ho­n­our them," Saun­ders said.

Un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion, af­ter a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion is passed by the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly, the pres­i­dent and Cab­i­net must im­me­di­ate­ly re­sign.

The Gov­ern­ment is al­lowed to stay in place in a care­tak­er role un­til the fresh elec­tion is com­plet­ed with­in three months.

The three-month dead­line may be ex­tend­ed on­ly by a two-thirds vote by the as­sem­bly.

"It would not be right for the court by the is­suance of co­er­cive or­ders or de­tailed di­rec­tives to pres­sure or in­struct these bod­ies on how they should act and there­fore pre­empt the per­for­mance by them of their con­sti­tu­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty," he said.

As the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion was ap­pealed the three-month time lim­it will com­mence from when the CCJ even­tu­al­ly up­held it on June 18.

In its judge­ment, the CCJ ap­proved the ap­peal, in which Op­po­si­tion Leader Bharat Jagdeo, oust­ed gov­ern­ment mem­ber Char­ran­das Per­saud and so­cial ac­tivist Christo­pher Ram chal­lenged the de­ci­sion of Guyana's Court of Ap­peal to strike down the con­tro­ver­sial mo­tion, which was passed by a slim 33 to 32 ma­jor­i­ty.

The judges sug­gest­ed that the Ap­peal Court got it wrong when it stat­ed that the for­mu­la for cal­cu­lat­ing the ma­jor­i­ty for the mo­tion was di­vid­ing the num­ber of as­sem­bly mem­bers by two, round­ing off and adding one.

They stat­ed a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty, as was tak­en last year, was all that was re­quired as the as­sem­bly has an odd num­ber of mem­bers.

The CCJ fur­ther ruled that Ar­ti­cle 156 of Guyana's Con­sti­tu­tion, which re­quires as­sem­bly mem­bers to in­di­cate if they wish to vote against their par­ty and be re­moved a re­sult, was not ap­plic­a­ble in a no-con­fi­dence vote.

The court stat­ed that as­sem­bly mem­bers were al­lowed to vote against their par­ty even if it meant them be­ing re­moved af­ter­ward.

The court al­so re­ject­ed ar­gu­ments from Guyana's At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Basil Williams and po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist Comp­ton Reid over whether Per­saud's vote should al­so be in­val­i­dat­ed as he had dual cit­i­zen­ship with Cana­da.

While it ruled that Per­saud had been un­law­ful­ly elect­ed to the as­sem­bly, it stat­ed that his po­si­tion could have on­ly been chal­lenged in an elec­tion pe­ti­tion brought with­in 28 days of when he was elect­ed in 2015.

The CCJ was al­so asked to con­sid­er a sep­a­rate ap­peal from Op­po­si­tion MP Mustapha Zul­fikar, who chal­lenged Granger's ap­point­ment of re­tired Judge James Pat­ter­son as chair­man of the GECOM.

The court ruled that Granger failed to give suf­fi­cient and com­pelling rea­sons for re­ject­ing 18 can­di­dates put for­ward by Jagdeo, be­fore he went ahead to ap­point Pat­ter­son in Oc­to­ber 2017.

Pat­ter­son re­signed on June 25.

De­liv­er­ing the fi­nal or­ders in that case, Saun­ders ad­vised that Granger and Jagdeo should con­sult on ap­point­ing Pat­ter­son's re­place­ment with­in a rea­son­able time and us­ing the guide­line set in the sub­stan­tive judge­ment.