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Why cry foul now?
Oct 15, 2009 Letters
Dear Editor,
Every time President Jagdeo opens his mouth to comment on the issue in respect to which he has no expertise, he embarrasses himself.
Readers will recall that he wanted to have Winston ‘Blackout’ Brassington lecture Yesu Persaud on tax holiday laws when Mr. Persaud queried the tax holidays given by the President to Queens Atlantic.
Christopher Ram quickly sorted him out and demonstrated just who was ignorant of the tax holiday laws. Needless to say, no lecture ever ensued.
Now President Jagdeo has committed yet another faux pas. He is accusing the CCJ of bias in its decision against Guyana because the CEO of TCL is a trustee of the CCJ trust fund. The question is who sanctioned this appointment. The answer is the heads of Government of CARICOM, including the President himself. One wonders if this issue ought not to have been properly raised at the very commencement of the trial, or whether it would have been raised at all if Guyana had won the case.
Be that as it may, I understand in Guyana it is the Government that provides funds to run the courts, and pays the salaries of both judges and magistrates and all court employees.
There also now exists a constitutional fiction called a Judicial Service Commission (JSC) which administers the appointments of judicial officers.
The present Commission consists of all Presidential appointees – the Acting Chancellor, the Acting Chief Justice, a retired Judge, somebody recommended to represent the Bar and the Chairman of the Public Service Commission.
The Constitution contemplates that the Chancellor and Chief Justice are substantively appointed. But we have two actors in those positions since President Jagdeo could not get the constitutionally required consent of Robert Orlando Corbin. So the constitutional legality of the JSC may be in doubt. It follows that what passes for a Judicial Service Commission in Guyana is a bunch of Presidential appointees. These are the very persons who appoint judges who have to decide cases which may involve the State against the citizen or vice versa.
Is there not some sort of conflict of interest here? And is this not a case of the pot calling the kettle black? But why does President Jagdeo not tell the people of Guyana the truth.
This whole thing with TCL is not simply about TCL’s inability to satisfy the local cement market. It is about the President helping out his friend who supplied him with cement to build his mansion in Pradoville.
The piper has to be paid. This is why at the trial the witnesses for Guyana could not provide an answer to the question why did Guyana not simply apply for a waiver of the CET?
President Jagdeo’s action has caused this country to be sued in the first case involving the original jurisdiction of the CCJ and a judgment obtained against this country for what the Court described as a “Flagrant breach” by Guyana of the Treaty provisions.
Now Guyana is about to be found in contempt of the Order of that Court because President Jagdeo, as in customary PPP fashion “thrown the Court Order over his shoulders” and to cover up all this, he is now suggesting that the Court was biased.
As a nation we really have to wake up and rid ourselves of these people.
Bibi K. Nandram
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