High court hears challenge to Shirley candidacy
Navajo Times | Ravonelle Yazzie Joe Shirley Jr., left, looks on as his running mate, Buu Nygren, is congratulated by a supporter last week.
LOS ANGELES
The Navajo Nation Supreme Court will take up the issue again today of how many terms someone can have as president of the Navajo Nation.
The justices of the court are meeting at 1:30 p.m. to hear an appeal from Vincent Yazzie, one of the candidates who did not make it through the primary, on his election complaint trying to get Joe Shirley Jr. off the election ballot because he has already served two terms.
Yazzie lost his complaint before the Office of Hearings and Appeals, in part because this issue came up in 2010 and the Supreme Court ruled that someone who has served two consecutive terms could run again after sitting out a term.
However, Bernadine Martin, Yazzie’s attorney, is prepared to argue today that the Supreme Court made the wrong decision.
In a brief she filed before the Supreme Court, Martin pointed out that the law enacted by the Navajo Nation Council back in 1990 said that no one “shall serve more than two terms.”
This is not vague, she writes. The Council, upset at the corruption that took place under former chairman Peter MacDonald, did not want a future leader of the tribe to gain that much power so they decided to set term limits.
And although the court has decided this before, Yazzie is going before a new chief justice, JoAnn Jayne, and a new associate justice so their take on the issue may be different than that taken by former Chief Justice Herb Yazzie.
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Highway 264,
I-40, WB @ Winslow