PM’s slip-rule bid denied

 By DEMAS TIEN
THE Supreme Court has rejected an application by Prime Minister Peter O’Neill to revisit its decision which dismissed an appeal by Finance Minister James Marape against a warrant of arrest.
A three-man bench consisting of Justice Derek Hartshorn, Justice Collin Makail and Justice Don Sawong rejected the slip-rule application.
The court ruled that it did not make a mistake (or slip) when dismissing Marape’s appeal on April 5.
It means that the dismissal of Marape’s appeal against a warrant of arrest against him stays.
Hartshorn, who read out the court’s decision, said the grounds of the application must be based on the information put before the court in the substantive appeal.
He said the grounds relied on by O’Neill, through lawyer Tiffany Twivey, to seek leave of the court to move the slip-rule application were irrelevant. Twivey said the notice of appeal was about the decision of Justice Ere Kariko in the National Court on July 1, 2014, which refused to grant the consent orders sought.
She submitted that the court made an error when discharging the two temporary orders of July 30, 2014, and October 23, 2014, because the orders were not an issue in the appeal.
The first was to restrain the police from arresting Marape and the second (Oct 23) was to restrain police from arresting and issuing threats of violence against O’Neill and his lawyers.