The Court of Ap­peal has re­served its judge­ment in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC)'s ap­peal over the dis­missal of its elec­tion pe­ti­tions for five mar­gin­al seats in the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tions. 

Ap­pel­late Judges Gre­go­ry Smith, Mark Mo­hammed, and Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar were ex­pect­ed to hear sub­mis­sions in the ap­peal be­tween Mon­day and this morn­ing but re­served their de­ci­sion af­ter the par­ties com­plet­ed the process ahead of sched­ule, yes­ter­day evening. 

In the ap­peal, the par­ty is seek­ing to over­turn the de­ci­sion of an­oth­er three-mem­ber ap­peal pan­el that up­held the de­ci­sion of High Court Judge Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mour­er to dis­miss the pe­ti­tions in Oc­to­ber 2016. 

The par­ty is con­tend­ing that the is­sue of ap­par­ent bias arose in re­la­tion to Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie, who head­ed the pan­el, as there were al­le­ga­tions in the pub­lic do­main that he al­leged­ly spoke with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley about Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) hous­es for per­sons he rec­om­mend­ed. 

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sion on be­half of the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) yes­ter­day, Se­nior Coun­sel Rus­sell Mar­tineau re­peat­ed stat­ed that there was no nexus be­tween the al­le­ga­tions against Archie and the Court of Ap­peal's pre­vi­ous rul­ing in the case, which was unan­i­mous­ly de­cid­ed by Archie and Ap­pel­late Judges Al­lan Men­don­ca and Pe­ter Ja­madar. 

Mar­tineau not­ed that there was no co­gent ev­i­dence of What­sapp com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween Archie and Row­ley, as the ev­i­dence showed that Row­ley de­nied its ex­is­tence and Archie claimed that he made pe­ri­od­ic rec­om­men­da­tions to the HDC of­fi­cials and not Row­ley. 

Mar­tineau claimed that judges were al­lowed to make such re­quests to help the des­ti­tute in so­ci­ety. 

Mar­tineau's claim was ques­tioned by Ra­jku­mar, who said: "The law is not that you can't do these things, the law is you must dis­close these things if nec­es­sary in the con­text." 

Mar­tineau sug­gest­ed that if judges were re­quired to make such mi­nor dis­clo­sure it may lead to per­sons frus­trat­ing the ju­di­cial process by re­peat­ed­ly re­quest­ing that they re­cuse them­selves. 

"The Ju­di­cia­ry will col­lapse...That is not what the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice stands for," Mar­tineau said. 

Mar­tineau al­so re­ject­ed the UNC's claims that Archie's con­duct breached the code of ethics for judges. 

"We can­not let the code of ethics be the mater of our so­ci­ety. It is a guide," Mar­tineau said. 

Dur­ing yes­ter­day's hear­ing, Se­nior Coun­sel Regi­nald Ar­mour, who is rep­re­sent­ing San Fer­nan­do West MP Faris Al-Rawi, pre­sent­ed his sub­mis­sions on why the ap­peal should be dis­missed.