in Part II of the Second Schedule of the 1966 Constitution as a proposed amendment to Section 30 which provided for the election of a President in place of a Governor General51. Article 30 stated that the President was to be elected by the votes of the members of the National Assembly,52 who had already been elected to that body. Article 177(4) therefore was always intended to operate after the President had been elected, originally by the National Assembly, or as is now the case, had been deemed and declared to be President. Questions as to the validity of the President’s election were never intended to impugn or relate to the validity of ballots cast by electors at the election of members of the National Assembly. [49] In consequence, we agree with Justice Persaud that, in any event, Ms David’s Application to the Court of Appeal was premature. For it to be considered, as we stated in the previous paragraph, Article 177(4) requires that a particular Presidential candidate should have been deemed and declared to have been elected and their election placed in issue.53 An ordinary reading of Article 177 shows that it follows a sequential and logical progression. Paragraph 1 addresses lists of candidates and the deeming of an elector’s ballot to be a vote also for the Presidential candidate named in the list. Paragraph 2 indicates the circumstances when a Presidential candidate is deemed and declared to have been elected. Paragraph 3, which is irrelevant to these proceedings, addresses the rare circumstance where there is an equality of votes among lists that garner more votes than any other list. At the conclusion of the process outlined for resolving that rare circumstance, Paragraph 3 requires the GECOM Chairperson to ‘declare the Presidential candidate designated in that list to be duly elected as President’. By the time the reader arrives at Paragraph 4, a Presidential candidate has already been deemed and declared to be elected President, and this Paragraph caters for the Court of Appeal answering any question as to the validity of his or her election, provided the question depends on his or her qualification for election or the 51 When Guyana became a Republic, the entire Article 30 from the Second Schedule, including 30(13), became a part of the Constitution. See Cap. 1:01 of the Laws of Guyana as published in 1973. 52 ibid, s 30(2), (4) and (8). 53 See Narayan Khare v The Election Commission of India [1957] INSC 43,AIR 1957 SC 694, (1957) SCR 1081; NP Ponnuswami v Returning Officer, Namakkal Constituency [1952] INSC 2, AIR 1952 SC 64, (1952) SCR 218.