There is no justifying the imperfect application of the rule of law

Oct 06, 2008 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
Allow me, if you will, to respond to a couple of things touched on by Godfrey Skeete in his response to my letter pointing out that an argument for the rule of law is not akin to condoning criminality.

I would first like to thank Mr. Skeete for his tempered response to at least some of my positions. That, I openly admit, serves to modify some understandable early impressions I had formed based on a pattern of selective targeting that is obvious in Mr. Skeete’s letters.

At the same time, I still vehemently disagree with any solution or methodology designed to break down a house in order to fix it. In this pursuit, I will deal with some of the issues or questions posited by Mr. Skeete in the order they appeared in his response.

First of all, Mr. Skeete, the fact that the law is not perfect does not excuse or justify imperfect application of its rules, because we humans are not perfect either. And a combination of an imperfect organism misapplying the rules of an imperfect system is likely to cause serious injury to the remnants of the social and cohesive fabric in our human nestings.

It is exactly because the law is not perfect that such high standards were put in place to govern the conduct of those charged with its enforcement.

Analogously, the domestic rules imposed by parents in a household are never perfect either. But we do not allow that to excuse or justify prohibited conduct by those under our care, and whom we are in a process of moulding into well functioning adults.

I’m afraid that you have it wrong Mr. Skeete. The law will not necessarily respect you because you respect it. If that were so, the innocent would not be falsely imprisoned or killed, and honest, law-abiding crime victims would not have to wait an eternity for manifestation of that respect when they needed it most.

It is when the law and those charged with its enforcement operate in a manner that is respectful of their positions and the dignity of those whose conduct and behaviour they supervise that reciprocity is likely to take hold and bridge gaps between those in whom the powers to take liberty and life are vested, and those who are the constitutional repositories for such powers.

Mr. Skeete, I am not of the disposition to beat on my chest and extol my virtues as it relates to Umoja, as it relates to Kujichagulia, as it relates to Ujima, and the assorted principles of leadership and community consciousness that you identify as lacking in the “black collective”. We have been witnesses to the experience of those who have taken these very principles to the public attention in the form of letters, like Eric Phillips, for example, and of them being rent asunder by many and sundry for daring to think outside of the circles of the whipped.

What is even more of an irony in all of this is the absence of this level of indignation from many like you over the questions raised about what Phillips was proposing, and allusions from some that a proposal for black self help and self examination was akin to threats against other segments of the population. I am also surprised that you opt to dedicate so much time and concern to linking scrutiny of the operations of state agencies with criminality, and there is nary a peep out of you when scurrilous attempts to link the charitable works of Mark Benschop to criminality and a cult surfaces.

One would have to be severely challenged in terms of attention span, Mr. Skeete, not to be piqued by these discrepancies, and be in puzzlement over your agenda. I happen to be a holistic thinker and observer Mr Skeete, and am not given to excluding relevant historical facts and antecedents from my analysis of any situation.

I must say, Mr. Skeete, that I am more than a trifle alarmed over the facetious tendency here of late of ascribing negative implications to the writing styled delivery of a message, as a means of impeaching or nullifying the contents of that message.

The writing style of those of us who grew up and attended school in Guyana before the advent of television is very much influenced by the diversions at our disposal at that time. And that was reading. We are not neo-academic types, and do not obsess ourselves with the grammatical dotting of every “I” and crossing of every “T”. We express our views in the manner we were taught to write, with no attempt or intent to “academically window dress” our perspective. We cannot be held responsible when perception of our intent is skewed by discomfort over what we have to say.

And, finally, Mr. Skeete, in response to your closing remark quote: “There are many among us who tell us fancy things but do nothing in real terms to help us: But they call on so many others to offer that help. The term “hypocrisy” comes to mind”, I say: et tu Brute! I mean all this talk about being part of the black collective and of being concerned about the direction of a group, and you venture here! Based on this remark, you are alluding that you know everything about everyone who offers to and gives help to our mutual concerns.

Look, my brother, every letter you write to the newspaper is a composition of bashing those who critique the operations of the state and its entities, even to the point of labelling them criminal conspirators. Why would anyone choose to use you or your awareness as a conduit for their charitable donations? In addition, what I and others do in terms of “helping out” is between us and those at the other end of the interaction, and thus it should remain. You need to abandon the anachronistic local conventional wisdom that links altruistic activism with public self-aggrandizing adverts.

Things that you and those in your circle do not know do happen to exist. So the presumption that your lack of awareness of an individual’s contribution to what you describe as “our collective” means that there is none is disappointingly puerile, I regret to say. You are neither an, or the, lsland around which the waters of activism and help to those who are in need in our motherland flow and revolve. You ought to factor this into consideration before jumping to such outlandish conclusions.

Robin Williams