SPDF files petitions against TRNUC for overstepping mandate |21 June 2020

Mrs McIntyre (Photo: Joena Meme)

The Supreme Court yesterday granted the Seychelles People’s Defence Forces (SPDF) permission to proceed with two petitions against the Truth, Reconciliation and National Unity Commission (TRNUC) on the grounds that the commission is overstepping its mandate in its intention to investigate a case brought by the families of the two young SPDF soldiers, Alberto Antat and Rodney Payet, who disappeared on Assomption island on Monday October 8, 2018.

According to Attorney General Frank Ally, the SPDF has some concerns, in relation with this particular case, as it feels that it does not fall under the mandate of the commission, which is officially stated as 1977 to 1993, when Seychelles became a multi-party state.

“We have a law and the law has an objective. SPDF feels that the commission should keep its investigations within its mandate. This is what happened and as you know, we represent government entities, and SPDF falls under the government, so we instituted the proceedings. At this point, we have simply approached the court to seek permission to bring the petition. This morning, the court said SPDF has sufficient interest and can therefore bring the petition. This petition will be served on the commission, and if the commission has any objections, it will raise them and the court will consider.”

“Early on, when we drafted the proceedings and filed it, we wrote to the commission and gave it a notice, and this is not normally done. But TRNUC is not our adversary, it is a statutory body, an entity created by a law, a law which was mostly bid by partisan, and the President assented the law to establish the commission, so we made it our duty to inform it that SPDF has instructed that a petition be filed,” AG Ally explained.

State Counsel Stefan Knights clarified that the second subject matter pertains to files requested by the commission and which SPDF feels that the amount of time which the commission is keeping the files is unreasonable. He proposed that the commission refused to return some of the files requested back by the SPDF, despite being advised to make copies of the files and hand them back.

Chairperson of TRNUC, Gabrielle Louise McIntyre, who together with other commissioners and legal representative Karen Domingue, appeared before court yesterday, clarified that in taking on the case, the commission did admissibility determination and decided that they could take on the cases but only after establishing the status of the ongoing investigation.

“The commission’s mandate says it has to be a matter related to the Coup D’état of 1977. The commission has taken a broad-based view of its mandate, it considers the primary period to be 1977 to 1993. However, it does not believe, based on the complainants that it has heard, that multiparty democracy changed the system.”

“We see three prongs that make this quite clear to us. First is, the party that took power through the Coup, maintain both legislative and executive power until 2016 and they maintain executive power to date. There is a clear link there to the Coup. Secondly, the one-party state politicised public service. We don’t see that there’s been a real move away from the policies or people that were supporting the one-party state. The third prong we see is the relationship of the army, so the reason we found this admissible is because the President comes from the same party who took power by coup, and he is the Commander in Chief, but also the SPDF, even Colonel Roseline told us in his testimony a couple of weeks ago, that yes the army was established by the revolution, to protect the revolution and its allegiance was to the revolution and that it only began to change once he took office, and that was recently,” chairperson McIntyre explained.

According to Mrs McIntyre, over half of the complaints and alleged human rights violations heard by the commission occurred after the primary period, but occurred after multi-party democracy. If court decides to grant an injunction in favour of SPDF, this could mean that TRNUC will be restricted to cases and matters which occurred within the primary timeframe.

“If that would happen, the commission has already discussed and we would try to give them to other forums to deal with, the Human Rights Commission, or the Police,” Mrs McIntyre said.

The matter is due to be heard by court on Friday June 26, whereby court will hear objections with respect to the motion for an injunction.

Laura Pillay