Acting judge disqualifies herself

ACTING judge Royale Thompson has disqualified herself from presiding over the judicial review of a case where a lawyer is seeking to stop a Commission of Inquiry report being made public.
Lawyer Paul Paraka and former solicitor-general Zachery Gelu had sought an injunction to stop the 182-page final report of the Finance Commission of Inquiry involving millions of kina payouts in out-of-court settlement claims between 2000 and 2006 from being made public.
The matter came before Thompson last month.
But Paraka and Gelu, who were named in the report, asked the judge to disqualify herself from hearing the review on the grounds of “reasonable apprehension of bias”.
Paraka argued that when he had instituted judicial review proceedings on Oct 22, 2007, against the members of the Lawyers Statutory Committee and the PNG Law Society, he had named Thompson as one of the defendants in that case.
The application was heard in July 2008 and the decision is pending.
Paraka said through his counsel Harvey Nii that this raised an apprehension of bias which he argued would prevent Thompson from being seen to be fair in determining the proceedings before her.
Last Friday, she disqualified herself from hearing the review of the Commission of Inquiry report case.
 “I consider that a reasonable, fair, indeed Papua New Guinean observer might form the view that because I was named in the 2007 legal proceedings issued by the second applicant (Paraka), that I defended those proceedings, and they are still pending, I may be pre-disposed to decide the case now before me, otherwise than on its merits.
“Accordingly, the application for me to disqualify myself is granted,” Thompson ruled.
The inquiry had been previously heard by (now retired) judge Justice Mark Sevua on June 16, 2010, but he had not ruled on it before he left office.
In March last year, Paraka and Gelu started proceedings seeking a judicial review of the numerous decisions made by the Commission of Inquiry members Justice Maurice Sheehan, Justice Catherine Davani and businessman Don Manoa as first respondents, Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare and the NEC as second respondents and NEC secretary Manly Ua as the third respondent.
Paraka and Gelu on March 6 last year, took out an interim injunction order restraining the respondents from discussing, debating, publishing or implementing the final report of the inquiry.