McKay argues against admission of Carrington's letter to Hoyte
By William Walker The letter from CARICOM Secretary-General, Edwin Carrington to PNC leader Desmond Hoyte appeared in court yesterday but Hoyte's lawyer still insisted it should not be admitted into evidence. Senior Counsel Rex McKay argued that the letter of July 14, 1998 with its attached erratum endorsed by all the members of the CARICOM Audit Commission (CAC), could only be admitted to prove that "Hoyte had received the documents and had knowledge of certain facts." The erratum corrects the findings on page 29 of the CAC report that 45,000 persons voted without ID cards during the 1997 elections. McKay continued that while the letter itself might be admissible Carrington was not the creator of the erratum. It would be like some one sending a letter wrapped up in a copy of Stabroek News and being asked to vouch for the paper's veracity, McKay hypothesised. He read from the letter in which Carrington wrote: "The information (erratum) was only yesterday transmitted to us by a facsimile from the office of one of the members of the commission." How strange Carrington should be so vague about the document's provenance! Carrington might have been letting the "cat out of the bag!" he suggested. McKay revealed, "That is why we were at all times suspicious of the copy," and he went on to question the authenticity of the signatures of the commissioners. Senior Counsel Ralph Ramkarran representing former president Janet Jagan asked the court to ignore the sinister motives his learned friend McKay had imputed to Carrington's letter. Obviously the letter could only come from one office, he said. As for the signatures, he referred the court to the testimony of CARICOM official Joseph Farrier who had compared the signatures on the erratum with those on the CAC report and stated they were consistent. He invited the court to look for themselves. Ramkarran said that the fact that Hoyte had been aware of the endorsed erratum since July 14, 1998, was itself a reason for its admission. Admission would show there existed an erratum signed by all the commissioners and "the erratum says something different to what is on page 29 of the report," Ramkarran contended. "How should the court resolve contradictions when evidence is available?" he asked and answered himself that the best way to resolve that one would be to count the voter identification cards. The court has yet to rule on his application and Ramkarran is to reply to arguments made by McKay last week before a decision is made. McKay, laughing, said this was the fourth time the court had been asked to admit the erratum and he thought it would be a mockery of the law if a document ruled inadmissible so many times was then admitted. McKay questioned the relevance of his client's state of mind to the case. The court had ruled at the beginning of yesterday's session that documents including the original faxed copy of the erratum, the signatures of the commissioners and a list of their contact numbers brought to court by CARICOM official Joseph Farrier were inadmissible simply because they were copies and Guyana's law did not permit copies to be put in evidence.
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