Former Attorney-General, Dr. Francis Alexis has responded sharply to statements made against the judiciary by Legal Affairs Minister, Elvin Nimrod after the State suffered a loss in the Peter David case.

The Keith Mitchell-led New National Party (NNP) government is seeking to get the local courts to rule that David is the illegal Member of Parliament for the town of St. George¹s since he contested the 2003 poll as a citizen of Canada.

In a ruling last week Monday, high court judge Kenneth Benjamin rejected the case on the procedure that was used by attorney for the State, Hugh Wildman of Jamaica. A clearly upset, Attorney-General Nimrod said the decision was not surprising given the recent history of cases involving the government in matters before the judges not sitting on the bench.

According to Dr. Alexis, the insinuations behind the remarks by the Attorney-General that the NNP Government expected the ruling in the Peter David case is yet another clear attempt by the regime to intimidate the Judiciary.

He notes that leader of the high-powered defense team, Dr. Lloyd Bernett QC, a distinguished Constitutional Lawyer from Jamaica, had presented the court in the Peter David case with several judgments from various Commonwealth Courts proving conclusively that the procedure adopted by the Attorney-General in the matter was completely wrong.

Alexis said that by contrast, the Attorney-General and his team led by Wildman could not produce a single case supporting the procedure that they used to take the case to court.

As such, he indicated that any expectation by the Attorney-General that the Court would uphold the procedure he followed is wholly absurd. Dr. Alexis also pointed out that in several recent cases, High Court Judges in Grenada have ruled in favour of the NNP Government and NNP Ministers.

He made mention of two recent matters - the Queen¹s Park Green Bridge case involving Spice Isle Retreaders and the libel case brought by Minister of social Services, Yolande Bain-Horsford against former Leader of the Opposition, Michael Baptiste.

The judges ruled in favour of NNP on both counts, and Dr. Alexis said that there was no talk of the Judges being biased. But when NNP loses a case, he said the ruling party is quick to rush and accuse the Judges of bias, adding that this is unjustifiable, frivolous and vexatious.

The former government minister cites the Peter David case as another instance of how NNP reacts when court matters do not go in its favour. "This persistence of NNP in frivolously accusing Judges of bias shows that NNP is intent on intimidating and muzzling the Judiciary, to overthrow the rule of law and install the rule of the Cabinet", he said.

"This is always a sure sign of a disposition to dictatorship", added Dr. Alexis.