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Is the law in Guyana a jackass?
A few years back, Mr. Rex Mc Kay wrote a long but depressing letter in the media about a particular court case. Once read, that letter had to instill despondency in every citizen in this country. I would suggest that the Bar Association intervene with Mr. Kay to get that letter, then together with Mr. Basil Williams’ recent claim about the law and the long episode about two condemned men trying to postpone the hangman’s noose, do a public symposium on the nature of the law in this country.
The story of the Bar Association is the story about Guyana’s long tragedy. This is a nation where central government shows continuous contempt for the rule of law and the people who know about the intricacies of the judicial system by virtue of being trained lawyers are silent about this social pathology. At the time of writing, I read in this newspaper that the police are looking to re-arrest a man who was granted bail for murder. I am not a lawyer and will not comment on the legal rightness or wrongness about such a move but when you consider that the State opposed the granting of bail to another murder accused then you know that the people who presently administer the country are not of the make-up to create precedents. No wonder they have turned to be the worst government in the history of the English-speaking Caribbean.
What is extremely troubling is that the attorneys who constitute the Bar Association do not have to worry about their employment. They do not work for intimidated companies and they are not state employees. They are in private practice. Yet they are more sheepish than the sheep in the area where I live.
This writer grew up in an era where the Bar Association was as active as the opposition parties in opposing the illegal activities of the government of the day. To put on even a public lecture about violations of the law by the State is an idea that cannot be germinated from the soil of the Bar Association. Has the Bar Association heard about the Civil Liberties Union of the US? Once the US government appears to infringe the rights of Americans, that body quickly files court papers.
What Mr. Mc Kay did is that he showed the sickening levels the law can be reduced to in Guyana. The case involved a re-migrant nurse who lost her land. Each time, she is offered an injunction from a judge, the opposing lawyer gets another judge to overturn the injunction and the cycle goes on. Mr. Mc Kay further explained what even when judgement is given, it is stopped by an order applied for. In other words, this lady’s entitlement will forever be postponed because the law does not allow for a permanent end.
A well known lawyer in this land explained a situation to me that made me feel that if I was younger, I would have done something quite radical to change Guyana, and you know what I mean. Citing the complexities of the legal system, she demonstrated to me that it can take hundreds of years to collect an award from the court because the other side can keep on ad infinitum applying for order after order that renders receipt of your entitlement a tantalizing game.
The State now has gone further down the fascist road by introducing legislation to allow the State to appeal High Court acquittals in criminal cases. Maybe Forbes Burnham should have been fascist like them and did that to Arnold Rampersaud, where he would have languished in jail for decades. Those who murdered policemen who guarded public toll gates and tried to burn down GuySuCo didn’t have to face such fascist legislation.
Attorney Basil Williams has stirred the imagination by claiming that one judge cannot cancel out the decision of another sitting judge the way it has just been done.
He is livid that it has happened (anything happens under the PPP Government). Williams won bail for a murder accused.
The State applied for the cancellation of that decision and another judge agreed. Now, is that legal? If it is, then can Williams not go to another judge and request the continuation of the bail ruling? I was told by a UG law professor that a sitting of the Full Court gave a ruling that overturned the decision of a superior court (Court of Appeal) over two men who were ordered to be hanged. Is this true? Well, it is. A laughable country is it not?
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