Chief Jus­tice of Guyana Rox­anne George-Wilt­shire will rule on Sun­day whether or not the High Court of Guyana has the pow­er to stop the Guyana Elec­tion Com­mis­sion (GECOM) from de­clar­ing the re­sults of Mon­day's elec­tion.

George-Wilt­shire's rul­ing is ex­pect­ed to be giv­en at 1.30 pm at court­room one of the Guyana High Court.

On Fri­day lawyers as­so­ci­at­ed with the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Par­ty/Civic (PPP/C) se­cured an in­junc­tion against GECOM, the Chief Elec­tions Of­fi­cer Kei­th Lowen­field and the Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cer for Re­gion Four Clair­mont Min­go.

The in­junc­tion was is­sued by Jus­tice Navin­dra Singh.

But Sat­ur­day, when the in­junc­tion was brought be­fore George-Wilt­shire, Se­nior Coun­sel Neil Boston ques­tioned whether the High Court had the ju­ris­dic­tion to even hear the mat­ter.

Boston told the court that ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 5 of Guyana's Na­tion­al As­sem­bly (Va­lid­i­ty of Elec­tions Act) an elec­tion pe­ti­tion is the prop­er av­enue to ad­dress the con­cerns about the elec­tion.

He said ac­cord­ing to the act, an elec­tion pe­ti­tion could be pre­sent­ed with­in 28 days af­ter the re­sults of an elec­tion are an­nounced.

Boston said the re­sults of the elec­tion have al­ready been an­nounced and, there­fore, the elec­tion pe­ti­tion and not the court is the way to go.

On Thurs­day a de­c­la­ra­tion was signed off by Min­go putting AP­NU+AFC in the lead to take the seat of gov­ern­ment.

Boston said the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Co­op­er­a­tive Re­pub­lic of Guyana did not con­tem­plate there should be two at­tacks—a ju­di­cial re­view and an elec­tion pe­ti­tion.

"This is not a two-stage process," Boston told the court.

Se­nior Coun­sel Dou­glas Mendes, who was flown in from T&T to lead the team that brought the in­junc­tion, how­ev­er, said the is­sue at hand was not the re­sults of the elec­tion but rather the process of the elec­tion.

Iron­i­cal­ly, Mendes said in 2001 some of the at­tor­neys on the PPP/C le­gal team brought a sim­i­lar ar­gu­ment to the one be­ing used by Boston now when Joseph Hamil­ton ap­proached the court call­ing for an elec­tion ver­i­fi­ca­tion process be done.

Mendes said then chief jus­tice De­siree Bernard or­dered the ver­i­fi­ca­tion.

The ar­gu­ment used was that the ver­i­fi­ca­tion could on­ly come by an elec­tion pe­ti­tion, but Bernard ruled against it.

Mendes said in that rul­ing Bernard clar­i­fied what cas­es should be brought by an elec­tion pe­ti­tion.

Af­ter Mendes fin­ished ad­dress­ing the court a fe­male in the pub­lic gallery be­gan to clap.

George-Wilt­shire or­dered that the clap­per be es­cort­ed out of the court­room.

Ini­tial­ly, the hear­ing of the in­junc­tion be­gan around 10.40 am Sat­ur­day but was even­tu­al­ly ad­journed to 1.30 pm for Mendes and his le­gal team to file af­fi­davits to the court.

The mat­ter end­ed around 4.30 pm Sat­ur­day.

AP­NU sup­ports jeer­ing at PPP/C sup­port­ers at­tor­neys

Sup­port­ers of the rul­ing Part­ner­ship For Na­tion­al Uni­ty and Al­liance For Change wait­ed out­side the High Court un­til the mat­ter end­ed for the day.

They jeered the at­tor­neys and sup­port­ers of the PPP/C.

The streets sur­round­ing the Guyana High Court were guard­ed by uni­formed po­lice of­fi­cers.

At 7.40 pm on Fri­day Guyana po­lice of­fi­cers shot dead an 18-year-old pro­test­er who chopped two of their col­leagues.

There have been some protest ac­tion in com­mu­ni­ties scat­tered across Guyana fol­low­ing Mon­day's gen­er­al elec­tion.

See­dat "De­von" Han­sraj was shot dead in West Coast Berbice

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports Han­sraj was among a group of peo­ple armed with cut­lass­es, pieces of wood and iron who at­tacked of­fi­cers along the Cot­ton Tree Pub­lic Road.

Han­sraj al­leged­ly chopped two po­lice of­fi­cers, iden­ti­fied as Sgt Ibaran and Con­sta­ble Fras­er, dur­ing the melee.

Han­sraj was shot dead in self-de­fence said the po­lice.

A third of­fi­cer, iden­ti­fied as Con­sta­ble Grant was al­so as­sault­ed by pro­test­ers.

All three po­lice of­fi­cers were sub­se­quent­ly tak­en to the New Am­s­ter­dam Pub­lic Hos­pi­tal for treat­ment.

They were list­ed in a sta­ble con­di­tion.

Po­lice have linked the at­tack to the cur­rent string of protests across the coun­try to the in­abil­i­ty of the GECOM to de­clare the elec­tion re­sults.

Both the AP­NU+AFC and the PPP/C have called for calm by their sup­port­ers.

The Guyana Po­lice Force yes­ter­day said it was con­sid­er­ing de­ploy­ing an ar­moured ve­hi­cle re­cent­ly pur­chased to deal with the re­cent in­creas­es in vi­o­lence to peo­ple and dam­age to build­ings be­ing re­port­ed.

"When protest ac­tiv­i­ties de­gen­er­ate in­to pub­lic dis­or­der, in­fring­ing on the rights of oth­er cit­i­zens and putting the pro­tec­tion of life and the safe­guard of prop­er­ty at risk, the Guyana Po­lice Force will, as a con­se­quence, take ap­pro­pri­ate and condign ac­tion against all of­fend­ers," it said in a re­lease.

RC Bish­op: Price to high to pay for a na­tion­al elec­tion

Pres­i­dent David Granger yes­ter­day at­tend­ed the 75th birth­day for Bish­op John Smith of the Cen­tral As­sem­bly of God Church.

The event was held at the Ra­ma­da Princess Ho­tel, Prov­i­dence, East Bank De­mer­ara.

The Ro­man Catholic Bish­op of George­town Fran­cis Al­leyne said the sit­u­a­tion in Guyana was too high a price to pay for an elec­tion.

"Peo­ple are dy­ing, peo­ple are be­ing wound­ed, chil­dren are be­ing trau­ma­tised, prop­er­ty is be­ing de­stroyed, the na­tion is gripped in fear. This is much too high a cost for a na­tion­al elec­tion and for a na­tion at any time. There are no words strong enough to ex­press the grav­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion and the ur­gency for it to end," Al­leyne stat­ed.

"To all ac­counts the way for­ward for the restora­tion of peace and hope rests with a small group of per­sons who have been tasked with man­ag­ing the whole elec­tion process. I add my voice to the many oth­ers in mak­ing strong ap­peal to the Guyana Elec­tions Com­mis­sion to ex­pe­di­tious­ly com­plete the ver­i­fi­ca­tion process to­wards the trans­par­ent, for­mal and law­ful de­c­la­ra­tion of re­sults."