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Tomorrow President Jagdeo faces my three lawyers in court

Aug 18, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

 

 

You cannot comment on any trial – criminal or civi l- once it is before the courts. This is a tradition we took from the British. I accept that convention. It preserves justice. I certainly think it is a disaster in the US that anyone can publicly analyse the contents of an ongoing trial.
What any media house or citizen can do, however, is to publicly report on the factual occurrences in court. No law prevents that. I intend to make use of that right in my columns. For example, if one of my lawyers asks President Jagdeo why he thinks the polar beer trial against businessman Joshua Shafeek did not proceed, whatever is the answer, it can be transmitted in the press the next day. If there was laughter in the court and the judge orders silence, that can be reported.
The President’s libel against me, Adam Harris and KN’s publisher Glenn Lall begins tomorrow in Justice Reynolds’s court at the top level of the High Court building. The case comes up one year after papers were filed. It is an unusual situation in world politics because hardly you find Presidents and Prime Ministers suing members of the media.
No president has sued another citizen since Guyana changed its constitution to become a republican country with an executive presidency. And that was a long time ago. It is extremely rare in government. My lawyers are Nigel Hughes, Khemraj Ramjattan, Christopher Ram and another lawyer, Mr. Neil Parsram associated with Mr. Ramjattan.
If anything is absolutely certain about the citizens in and out of the land is that without exception, all will be interested in the answers of President Jagdeo. The anticipation is that what will come out in that witness box would never have seen the light before. For this reason, the entire Guyanese nation and the Guyana Diaspora will be intensely interested in the contours of this trial.
As stated before, all the lawyers have solemnly promised that if there is a loss it will go to the appeal route with eventual presence in the Caribbean Court of Justice. Should that happen, Mr. Jagdeo would have been long gone.
For those who may not know, Mr, Jagdeo has sued, in his capacity as Bharrat Jagdeo and not as the President of Guyana. The issue is a line in a column of mine last June in which I accused the Guyanese presidency (not Mr. Jagdeo; didn’t print his name) of a certain style of policy-making. The principle of sub judice prevents me from any defence here and now in this article of what I wrote in that column. But once the case begins tomorrow, I will inform the public through this page what questions my lawyers advanced and the reactions from the witness box.
I guess that is all that can be said on the libel case for now. I hope if you are interested in seeing the trial that you get space to sit. It is a very small room with two benches. If the press occupies that space, then there may be only standing room, and even this facility is very small and the judge may not allow it.
Without a doubt this will be, not one of the most, but the most fascinating case in decades in this country. It will definitely be one of the most important confrontations in legal battles in the entire legal history of Guyana.
No matter how controversial Presidents Forbes Burnham, Desmond Hoyte, Cheddi Jagan and Janet Jagan have been, Mr. Jagdeo’s twelve-year reign has produced more curiosities and controversies than the combined presidencies listed above. I have chosen the words, “curiosities” and controversies” because they are value-free. A curiosity about a person does not mean it is negative. A controversy about a person does not mean that person is in the wrong.
Take me as an example. I will never reject the label that I am controversial. How can I, when the objective fact swirling out there is that some people are saying that I wrote this and I wrote that and that it was wrong for me to have said that or done that. That is a controversy whether I like it or not.
At the end of the day, I believe I have done the right thing, my conscience is clear and that I am not a bad person. Controversies surround all human beings that have public profiles. No serious scholar, worth his/her salt would deny that Mr. Jagdeo’s government for the twelve years has been marked by deep, extensive and ongoing controversies.

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