Dear Editor,
Mr Terrence Campbell asserts in a letter titled `No limitation on Opposition Leader’s power to withhold agreement on positions of Chancellor, CJ’ published in Kiskadee Watch on 17 August 2026 that the power of the Leader of the Opposition to withhold agreement to the appointment of a Chancellor and Chief Justice is subject to no limitation.
His letter rejects an opinion I expressed in a letter published in Kiskadee Watch the day before in which I spent two paragraphs on the power of the Leader of the Opposition to properly withhold agreement to a proposal put forward by the President for the appointment of a Chancellor and Chief Justice.
Mr Campbell surmises that I am publicly encouraging the President to attempt an unconstitutional unilateral appointment and says that would be reckless. But I did not and would not suggest that the President should make such an appointment unilaterally. I said without ambiguity that “…a Court could find that there is no reason to withhold a unilateral appointment on the basis of the impossibility of agreement to a reasonable proposal”.
This presumes litigation on the issue. The court is the place where authoritative statements of the law are made. Every other interpretation, including this one, is just an opinion.
The fact that the Constitution does not set conditions on the agreement of the Leader of the Opposition to a proposal of the President does not mean that there are no conditions and it certainly does not mean that a Leader of the Opposition can refuse to agree to a reasonable proposal indefinitely without any justification.
Laws and other legal documents, like the Constitution, must make sense and lawyers and judges spend most of their working lives determining the meaning and intent of those documents.
The power of the Leader of the Opposition to withhold agreement to a proposal is meant to serve a public good. If the President has a proposal and the Leader of the Opposition has objective facts which should prevent any reasonable President from appointing the proposed candidate, the Constitution allows those facts to be put forward and taken seriously.
This would apply, for instance, if the Leader of the Opposition knew, and the President did not, that the candidate had been convicted of some serious offence like murder. But the Leader of the Opposition cannot conclude that, because the candidate cycles to work on a red bicycle, he or she is not fit for appointment. That would be an irrational and capricious reason to withhold agreement and it would be unlawful.
No power conferred for public purposes, like the power under consideration, is conferred absolutely. In Porter v Magill, decided by the House of Lords of the United Kingdom in 2001, it was held that such a power is conferred on trust and must only be used in the right and proper way intended by Parliament.
Is it reasonable to presume that Parliament intended that there would never again be a Chancellor or Chief Justice because a Leader of the Opposition refused to agree, without good, or any, reasons? That does not sound reasonable to me and courts have said time and again that there are limits to the exercise of such powers.
In R (Miller) v Prime Minister (No 2), decided by the United Kingdom Supreme Court in 2019, the decision of the Prime Minister to advise the Queen to prorogue Parliament was challenged. The Court unanimously held that “…every prerogative power has its limits, and it is the function of the court to determine, when necessary, where they lie”.
In Miller, the Supreme Court also said that the exercise of the power is unlawful if it frustrates or prevents, without reasonable justification, a constitutional body from carrying out its constitutional functions. The Court held that it would intervene where the effect is sufficiently serious.
Surely, no court would hesitate to conclude that the non-appointment of a substantive Chancellor and Chief Justice over a twenty-five-year period is a serious situation warranting intervention if there is no reasonable justification for a refusal to agree.
In Mustapha v Attorney General of Guyana, also decided in 2019, President Granger’s decision to reject three lists of candidates successively given to him by the Leader of the Opposition and then to unilaterally appoint a Chairman of the Elections Commission was challenged by the current Minister of Agriculture.
The Caribbean Court of Justice held that the process was flawed and in breach of the Constitution. President Saunders and Justices Wit and Hayton said, in respect of the exercise of this constitutional power, that “[t]he President should only find a nominee unacceptable for some good reason on objective grounds”.
They continued, “[i]f a President were permitted, capriciously or whimsically, without proffering a good reason, to reject eligible nominees, this would frustrate the proper working of the Constitution…”
The words “good reason” and “objective grounds” do not appear in Article 161(2), but the Court nevertheless found that the concepts were implied into the Constitution on a proper reading.
I believe that these statements are applicable to the situation at hand. The power of the Leader of the Opposition to withhold agreement must be exercised reasonably and with objective justification.
The two paragraphs in my letter with which Mr Campbell took issue were based on these principles. If Mr Campbell knows of any persuasive or binding authority supporting his assertions, I would be happy to see it.
Yours faithfully,
Kamal Ramkarran
Discussion