BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – Opposition Leader, Bishop Joseph Atherley, has welcomed a High Court ruling dismissing a constitutional challenge to his appointment.
Bishop Joseph Atherley“I respect anybody’s right to bring a challenge even though I see it as a nuisance action. I would never have approached the Governor-General about appointment to that position even though I thought it was needful if I thought that the action could not have been properly pursued and instituted under the Constitution of Barbados,” Atherley told the online publication, Barbados TODAY.
Justice Shona Griffith earlier this week, threw out the motion by the former leader of Solutions Barbados, Grenville Phillips, who had sought a declaration from the High Court to define what “support” in law means, particularly with reference to the constitutional requirement that the Opposition Leader acquires parliamentary support in order to take up the post.
Atherley had been elected as a member of the ruling Barbados Labour Party (BLP) when it swept all 30 seats in the 2018 general election. But he announced his decision to cross the floor soon afterwards taking up the vacant post of Opposition Leader.
Phillips had also sued Attorney General Dale Marshall as the defendant, representing the Crown.
Section 74 of the Constitution of Barbados, which establishes a Leader of the Opposition as part of the executive branch of Government, states that the Governor-General must select a member of the House of Assembly whom the viceroy judges to be “best able to command the support of a majority of those members who do not support the Government”.
But contemplating the possibility that “there is no such person”, as was the case in 2018, the Governor-General has the power to select the “member of that House who, in [the G-G’s] judgment, commands the support of the largest single group of such members who are prepared to support one leader”..
The Opposition Leader said that he was pleased with the ruling which shows that justice is still much served in the interest of the democratic practice in Barbados.
“The action of course would not have been brought against me even though I would have been principal party to it. “It would have been brought against the Governor-General, hence the Office of the Attorney General would have to have defended the position taken by the Governor-General.,” Atherley said.
