Lawyer Fatty, victorious in the Court of Appeal as we predicted he would be back in August (and feeling magnanimous towards the defeated Mayor Lowe) makes a chivalrous attempt to defend the Lady’s Honour:-
“I don’t think the Mayor … did anything un-thought … the IEC conferred power on her to do something she didn’t have the power to do”.
That is very generous of Lawyer Fatty, but it would not pass the smell test! UK-trained lawyers like Lawyer Fatty will be aware of something called “the reasonableness of the passenger on the Clapham Omnibus” which is this: if Lawyer Fatty was meant to pay £2,000 into my bank account and he made a mistake and paid £2 million instead, I would be guilty of theft if I used that £2 million as my own money. That is common-sense. Mayor Lowe was warned, by Hon. Halifa Sallah and Freedomnewspaper amongst others, that the power conferred by the IEC was unlawful.She defiantly gave Halifa Sallah and others the proverbial two-fingers and went ahead to attest the voters! She should have asked herself whether she had the power – and like the “reasonable passenger on the Clapham Omnibus” asked: “Is attestation something I should do as a politically partisan Mayor?” She didn’t and she lost twice – in the High Court and in the Court of Appeal. Very gentlemanly of you Lawyer Fatty, but Mayor Lowe earned that yellow raw egg running down her face! (Pun on “yellow” intended – I hope those who Pa Nderry Mbai calls the“yellow folk” do have a sense of humour!)
Lawyer Fatty makes two other good points on the consequences of the High Court and Court of Appeal decisions:-
Firstly, he said that the ruling would impact the elections if there was a close vote that could be affected by the unlawfully registered voters in Banjul. I agree. I would have gone further and said that “one bad apple makes the whole bunch bad” – but the consequences of that line of thought for the whole Voters Register is too dire to contemplate!
Secondly, Lawyer Fatty said that it would be unlawful for the unlawfully registered voters to be expunged from the Voters Register. That would have been the simple solution – but I defer to the legal expertise of my Learned Superior!
Dida Jallow-Halake,
Notting Hill, UK.