SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

The sud­den pass­ing of Sir Fen­ton Ram­sa­hoye, QC, who pi­o­neered con­sti­tu­tion­al de­vel­op­ments in the Caribbean through le­gal vic­to­ries at the Privy Coun­cil, has sent shock waves through­out the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty in the re­gion.

Guyana-born Ram­sa­hoye, 89, died at Queen’s Eliz­a­beth Hos­pi­tal in Bar­ba­dos.

Ram­sa­hoye, who was at the fore­front of the in­de­pen­dence move­ment, stud­ied at Lon­don Uni­ver­si­ty where he was award­ed a BA. in 1949 and LL.B., LLM in 1953 and 1956 and was called to the bar at Lin­coln’s Inn in Feb­ru­ary 1953. He was award­ed a PhD in Com­par­a­tive Land Law from Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics and Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence in 1959.

In 1961, he was elect­ed a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment of Guyana and re­mained in par­lia­ment un­til 1973.He was At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Guyana from 1961 to 1964 and a mem­ber of Board of Gov­er­nors of Uni­ver­si­ty of Guyana from 1962 to 1964.

Ram­sa­hoye was ap­point­ed Se­nior Coun­sel in Guyana in 1971. From 1972 to 1975 he was Deputy Di­rec­tor of Le­gal Ed­u­ca­tion for the Coun­cil of Le­gal Ed­u­ca­tion in the West In­dies and head of Hugh Wood­ing Law School as a pro­fes­sor.

Hav­ing served the Bars of Eng­land and Wales, Guyana, Bar­ba­dos, T&T, Ja­maica, Montser­rat and the British Vir­gin Is­lands, he held the dis­tinc­tion of be­ing the le­gal lu­mi­nary that made the most ap­pear­ances be­fore the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil.

In 2006, he was knight­ed by Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al of An­tigua Sir James Carlisle.

Among those pay­ing trib­ute yes­ter­day was for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, who said in a state­ment that Ram­sa­hoye’s death was a per­son­al loss to him.

Ram­lo­gan de­scribed Ram­sa­hoye as the quin­tes­sen­tial ad­vo­cate who would be re­mem­bered for rep­re­sent­ing the poor and vul­ner­a­ble.

Ram­lo­gan said Ram­sa­hoye was suc­cess­ful in cas­es in per­son­al in­jury, dis­crim­i­na­tion and hu­man rights cas­es and was in­volved in the mat­ter of com­pen­sa­tion for breach of hu­man rights and pay­ment of salaries for MPs dur­ing the 18/18 tie brought by for­mer MP Chan­dresh Shar­ma.

Pamela El­der, SC, who was un­aware of Ram­sa­hoye’s pass­ing, was lost for words. Is­rael Khan, SC, said Ram­sa­hoye, the first prin­ci­pal of the Hugh Wood­ing Law School, be­lieved in Caribbean in­te­gra­tion and “did a lot for the young lawyers.”

Al­so ex­press­ing deep sor­row at Ram­sa­hoye’s pass­ing were for­mer Guyana House Speak­er Ralph Ramkar­ran and An­tigua Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne.