Former Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister Anil Nandlall has yet again lashed out at current Legal Affairs Minister Basil Williams over what he said are his controversial comments about the former AG’s role.
Williams, at a recent press conference said it was the former People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Government which caused the current state of affairs in the country. Williams blamed the previous Administration for failing the Guyanese law students, and for not giving special interest in the programme and its commitment with the Trinidad and Tobago-based Hugh Wooding Law School.
In a social network post on Tuesday, Nandlall rebuffed the statement made by the Attorney General, and in fact laid out that he (Nandlall), who had responsibility for the programme at the time, had been very much consistent in every endeavour to ensure students be successful getting into the HWLS.
“In 2014, I along with the then Head of the Department of Law, University of Guyana, successfully negotiated, on behalf of the Government of Guyana, the terms of a new agreement with officials of the University of the West Indies [UWI] and the Council of Legal Education [CLE] of the West Indies, for the continued automatic admissions of graduates of the UG Law Programme into the Hugh Wooding Law School,” Nandlall stated.
Nandall said this became necessary since the previous agreement entered into by his predecessor had come to an end through “effluxion of time”. He stated that the entire initiative was a PPP/C Government one which began in 1996.
“Two previous such agreements had expired. The responsibility became mine to negotiate and conclude the third. When the negotiations started, several members of CLE/UWI team argued against non-renewal of the agreement. We defeated this argument. They next argued for a reduction of the quota of 25. We again defeated this argument. In the end, not only did we succeed in retaining the quota of 25 for Guyanese nationals graduates but were able to secure an additional 10 places for non-Guyanese nationals graduates of the said Law programme,” he explained.
This agreement, he said, was to be signed before September 2015 to regulate the admission of students for the year 2015-2016 to the Law School. He said he left office in May of 2015, and upon his departure, he did brief Williams.
“I explained to him that the hard work is finished and that all he needs to do is to ensure that the agreement which was being drafted by UG And UWI be signed and taken to the CLE for their signature because it is a tripartite agreement.”
However, a year later, Nandlall said he is now reading in the press that Williams has disclosed that the agreement has not yet been signed.
“What is worse, rather than remain silent or admit to his utter incompetence, he blames, the previous Government and the Council of Legal Education for this predicament. To further conceal his ineptitude, he throws a red herring into the equation about building a local school. Even if that’s a feasible option, it will take years to materialise. What will happen to students in the meantime? That’s the issue; why after one year, the negotiated agreement has not been signed? I ask again, for how long will the nation endure such incompetence?” Nandlall asked.
Williams had told journalists that Government remained concerned about the situation in which students have found themselves and was working to have it settled.
Williams said the decision by the former People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Administration to discontinue contributions to the HWLS is responsible for the dilemma facing Guyanese law students.
“I could tell you that they all (HWLS) feel that because we don’t pay and contribute, it is unfair for us to have our students taking up places at the school,” Williams said.
According to him, the problem was further “aggravated” because all the campuses of the University of the West Indies are doing the full law degree just as the University of Guyana, and have hundreds of students who also want to enter into the programme.
The previous PPP/C Administration fought ‘tooth and nail’ in recent years to ensure that the top 25 University of Guyana law students are accepted in the Hugh Wooding Law School.
As a matter of fact, in 2013, then Caribbean Community (Caricom) Chairman, Dr Ralph Gonsalves had the cause to write the University of the West Indies Council for Legal Education on the impasse over Guyanese law students being accepted at the Trinidad-based Hugh Wooding Law School.
