If you've been following the recent debates on the Supplementary Appropriation Bills brought to the Parliament by the Briceno Government, you'll certainly have heard PUP politicians attempt to shut down criticism from Opposition UDP. They've been doing so by reminding the UDP that Former Prime Minister Dean Barrow his public spending regime was harshly criticized by the Supreme Court back in January 2020.
As we told you, that's the case, where the PUP, when they were in Opposition, pointed out to the court that in their opinion, Former PM Barrow, has engaged in the unlawful spending of 1.3 billion dollars in public funds, back when he was Minister of Finance. They argued he failed to get prior parliamentary approval for the spending of all that money.
The PUP's case was that Barrow abused the special warrants by declaring the public spending of those 1.3 billion dollars as "urgent and unforeseen". They also say that "urgent and unforeseen" in the constitution has a specific meaning, which the Former PM used loosely.
After listening to the case, Former Chief Justice Kenneth Benjamin ruled that the Former Prime Minister violated the constitution when his government spent public funds without first getting parliamentary approval. The problem is that he left office without perfecting his judgment, which is the legal step of finalizing his decision.
Because of that failure from the Former Chief Justice, his decision technically doesn't exist. So, Prime Minister John Briceno and Minister Julius Espat, the claimants of that case, took an application before Acting Chief Justice Michelle Arana.
Through their attorney, Senior Counsel Andrew Marshalleck, asked her to finalize the judgment and enforce the orders from Former CJ Benjamin, using the court transcripts from the arguments made before Benjamin.
After listening to their arguments, as well as the arguments made by the attorney for the defendants, the judge handed down a decision 6 days ago.
In her written judgment, Justice Arana said quote, "The application is wholly misconceived... to seek to have this court, a court of concomitant jurisdiction, rely on the transcript of the case to infer the terms of the order, and lift a stay which may or may not exist, and give effect to an order that is ambiguous and perhaps non-existent is preposterous... The Court is not a football to be kicked around by opportunists of any political party..."
With that, she dismissed the application, which means that the 2020 judgment has no effect. Last week, we asked Barrow about it:
Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow - Defendant
"They didn't get it, Daniel. Whatever the judge may have said turned out to be words writ in water because there was no actual judgment emanating from the courts. So, it's nonsensical to try to say, well, but if the judgment had been perfected, this is what it would have said. It wasn't perfected. So, it says nothing, and I think that they would be more concerned about the fact that they are now in court being sued because of deciding to pay out monies to the tune of 1.5 million dollars without first going to the House. And as well, Daniel, the truth is that historically, that sort of thing, unfortunately, often happened where as a consequence of oversight, monies that were spent were spent prior to getting parliamentary approval. And in some cases, the retrospective parliamentary approval was never obtained. Look, in the case for which they took me to court, a number of the instances they cited of retrospective approval never having been obtained were instances that occurred when the PUP was in power. So, it doesn't make it right, but it is a fact that too often, the need to honor the requirement that you go back and you get retrospective approval, within a certain timeframe, went by the board. That is a fact. We can't get around that, but it's not that the money was fraudulently spent or voted."
We'll have a closer look at this judgment in tomorrow's newscast.
