Sooba is gone but the law remains an ass

Jul 28, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

In my first year as a student at UG, just weeks after I enrolled, I came across an article in a journal. It had a profound influence on me. It is strange how a chance encounter with a song, newspaper column, book, advertisement, news item in the media can have a lasting influence on you. I was in the library reading voraciously when my eyes glanced on the journal, “Marxism Today.” It was the organ of the British Communist Party.
In that journal was an article titled, “Law and Class Struggle” by Alan Hunt. I devoured that analysis and was never the same again. That analysis influenced the way I saw capitalism and the law. I am sure that issue of Marxism Today is gone from the UG library.
We are talking about something I read in 1974. Since then UG library would have lost almost ninety nine percent of the holdings it had in 1974. The analysis was a learned depiction of how the law is shaped to benefit the powerful classes in society.
The author dissected the insurance industry and showed luminously how the law is designed to favour the insurance company and not the insured. From that night in the UG library in 1974, I became deeply distrustful of insurance. I remember when I lived on Hadfield Street; we insured the house against fire for $500,000. Long after, it dawned on me that we had paid the insurance company over a million dollars and would only get $500,000 if fire struck.
I went to the company and asked if there is any provision in the insurance regulations for my wife and I to get some money back because we had far exceeded the $500,000 ceiling. They said no. I stopped the policy and advised my wife to save the exact amount we would pay monthly to the company.
Had we continued the policy, we would have ended giving the company millions of dollars only to get $500,000 in the event of fire.
It was Dickens in his work, “Oliver Twist” who put the words in the mouth of the character, Mr. Bumble who exclaimed to the judge; “The law is an ass.” If I was to write a book on the ugly physiology of the fifteen years of the Jagdeo/Ramotar cabal, the Carol Sooba case would be among the first examples. I honestly still cannot get over the ruling in the Carol Sooba versus Royston King Case. It will linger in my mind forever.
If there is any reason for me to believe the law is an ass it is in the judgement rendered in the Sooba-King matter. I have dealt with this matter many times in my columns, as recent as last week so I need not discuss it further.
Sooba is gone but the mysteries of law are still with us. We see those mysteries unfolding every day in this country, and all you can do is wonder why the law is such an ass. Every week, the Chief Justice grants bail to people whose bail requests the Magistrates refused the previous week. This thing takes on a farcical appearance not to mention its comical face. Can the Magistrate grant bail? The answer is yes. Why then do they refuse bail and just a week after those remanded prisoners go to the Chief Justice, use the same arguments, as they submitted to the Magistrates in the original court appearance and bail is approved.
Is there any logic to this thing? Surely after a period of time, the Magistrate must be aware of the pattern. They must say to themselves that the lawyers will petition the Chief Justice anyway, and bail will be given, so it makes no sense refusing bail in the first place. But it doesn’t seem that the Magistrate could be bothered. Every week you read in the newspaper that the Chief Justice has offered bail to dozens of remand prisoners.
But what about the cost to the remanded accused? If bail is denied in the lower court, an application has to be made to the higher court and that entails more fees for the Attorney. Why do the Magistrates carry remand prisoners through this financial torture? These are the mysteries of the judicial system that even God may have difficulty understanding. There is an enigma of the court system I will never fathom. By what logic did the Chief Justice assign the Bharrat Jagdeo libel case against me and this newspaper to begin eleven months after the affidavits were filed? A libel normally takes ten years before it is heard.

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Sooba is gone but the law remains an ass

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