On September 28, Justice Nicola Pierre ordered the Commissioner of Information Charles Ramson Snr. to process and determine within 60 days three requests for information by commentator Christopher Ram.
The judge’s ruling following a judicial review application on 19 June 2025 by Mr Ram in relation to the functioning of Justice of Appeal (ret’d) Ramson’s office is a major victory for civil society and must mark the end of the obstruction of the Access to Information Act. Coincidentally, the ruling came on International Day for Universal Access to Information. Mr Ramson may no doubt wish to lodge an appeal but the ruling of the court will circumscribe his options.
Full credit must go to Mr Ram for persevering with this application under the Judicial Review Act. Mr Ram had also spearheaded a series of protests outside the office of Mr Ramson over his handling of requests for information and also outside of the office of President Ali.
In her ruling Justice Pierre found a lack of candour on the part of Mr Ramson on the question as to whether he had received the requests for information from Ram and said that this was “particularly ironic and lamentable in proceedings concerning the Access to Information Act and the Commissioner of Information”.
Aside from questions on ExxonMobil tax payments, Mr Ram had lodged queries about the statutory annual report that Mr Ramson was supposed to submit for presentation to Parliament. Such reports have never been provided.
Adverting to casuistry in one of Mr Ramson’s rejoinders during the proceedings, the judge said that the section 44 annual report is not a document which Mr Ram has asked the Commissioner to create or to compile for the purposes of answering the request.
“It is a document which the statute itself requires the Minister to prepare and lay before the National Assembly. Its subject matter is the operation of the very Act under which the request for access
is made. The Act itself prescribes that the report is to contain information concerning requests made to the Commissioner and other matters concerning the administration of the statutory
access regime.
“The March 12 request therefore was not, as the Commissioner characterized it in his letter of 24 March 2025, an ‘absurdity’ by which the Commissioner was being asked to ‘self-oversee!’
“Nor was it an attempt to place the Commissioner in the position of determining the propriety of his own conduct. That is not the Commissioner’s role under the Act in any event, his is not
the power to ‘oversee’ public authorities but to be ‘a clearing house for processing requests’ for information made under the Act [s.5(2)]”, the judge ruled.
The judge said that the request sought existing records and information concerning the operation of a statutory scheme, information which the Act specifies must be collected, compiled and given to the Minister and must be included in reports which the Act itself requires to be prepared and laid before the National Assembly.
Mr Ramson’s argument in court was that his office fell outside of the definition of a “public authority”. Justice Pierre disagreed.
She said that she did “not accept the respondent’s argument that the Commissioner falls outside the definition of “public authority”. In my view the Commissioner of Information falls within the
statutory conception of a public authority. The office exercises statutory functions on behalf of the State, is financially and administratively supported through Government, and operates
within a statutory reporting structure for which the Minister bears responsibility to the National Assembly.
“I find that the Commissioner of Information is a public authority within the meaning of section 2 of the Access to Information Act 2011”.
The judge also disagreed with Mr Ramson’s argument that the Access to Information Act required Mr Ram, as a precondition to invoking the statutory process, to first apply to the public authority believed to hold the information and obtain a refusal.
“I find no such requirement in the Act. The Commissioner mandated that the applicant prove he had applied for the information at its source, and referred to section 15 as
imposing that requirement. The commissioner clearly misunderstood the statutory scheme”, the judge found.
For years, a number of persons have complained about the flippant and dismissive attitude of Mr Ramson to requests for information. In one of his most infamous responses to then Head of Transparency Institute Guyana Inc, Mr Anand Goolsarran, Mr Ramson pleaded the lack of resources and declared “In the words of the famous Calypsonian, Mighty Sparrow, `no money, no love’. No doubt, your Institute, if at all influential, could ameliorate the disastrous consequences visited upon workers in general”.
While Mr Ramson’s shameful and shameless performance has been on display for many years, equally disgraceful has been its toleration by PPP/C presidents Ramotar and Ali. Their indulgence of the inanities of Mr Ramson has underlined their disdain for the information function as enshrined in the Act.
Following the judge’s ruling the public waits to see how President Ali responds and whether he will move to have Mr Ramson vacate his office.
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