Granger and Nagamootoo have to define justice for us

Mar 15, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo has been catapulted into a controversy from which it will not be easy to extricate himself. At the heart of the enigma is the meaning of the concept of justice. Space will not permit an adumbration of the meaning of justice. But in any discussion of justice, it would be unwise to debate what it means without the role of moral obligation.
Is the Government of Guyana telling Guyanese that it cannot rescind the most blatant acts of immorality in the distribution of radio and cable television licences because those immoralities had the stamp of legal approval?
The two cannot be separated. It is for this reason that deliberate police incitement to commit a crime cannot be accepted and should not be accepted by society. It is heinous and dangerous to arrest someone for participation in an indecent act if you use a female police decoy with the intention of enticing a person to have sex with her for money.
I have seen such a case got thrown out in a Canadian court with the judge using harsh words to condemn the police action. Arrest a person if they go into a brothel but do not put a policewoman acting as a prostitute to entice them to have sex. The police have a moral obligation to protect society not incite people to commit illegal acts.
President Jagdeo shared out radio licences in the most vulgar manner to his party apparatchiks and business friends. It does not matter if it carried the official imprimatur of the Office of the President. The immoral side to it was profanely incestuous. Is one to understand that when the politics of immorality carries the legal stamp of the President or Prime Minister of a country, succeeding governments cannot change such depraved policy-making aberrations?
I would like to read or hear how President Granger and Prime Minister Nagamootoo define justice.
Most horrible things are going through my mind as I pen this column. The first is reparations for slavery. I support such a demand. If the Jews could be compensated for genocide committed against them by Nazi Germany so should the descendants of the Jews. But the legality of the radio licence argument could be used to deny compensation to Holocaust victims and the descendants of the slaves.
Slavery had legal sanction by European Governments. Execution of slaves was done under British laws. Many Jews were put to death by German courts. Where does that leave morality?
What about apartheid? Many anti-fascist, freedom fighters were jailed under the laws of South Africa. Did such legal backing make those decisions acceptable? This brings into focus the question of imprisonment in Guyana.
Are President Granger and Prime Minister Nagamootoo telling us that if on assuming power in May 2015, they would not have ordered the release anti-dictatorship activists who were jailed on trumped up charges? Are President Granger and Prime Minister Nagamootoo telling this nation that such people would have had to face their trials and if jailed or freed so be it? I am afraid the context through which justice must be seen is being overlooked here.
I want to touch on the implications of the radio licence legality for the Pradoville 2 case. The Attorney-General was quoted last week as saying that investigations into criminal violations of Pradoville 2 must continue. But there is a huge but. Didn’t Pradoville have the stamp of the President? Was the sale of land not legally done?
Was the landscaping of the area backed by the legal sanction of those in authority? If there was absolutely no legal authority in the Pradoville 2 story, then criminality occurred. But if the project involved the legal authority of the President, then how can a criminal investigation stand up?
I am being provocative here. My stance is that both the licence policy and Pradoville 2 should be revoked. But I am arguing that if you use the legal argument to retain the distribution of licences under Jagdeo then the same legal criterion applies to Pradoville 2. The Guyana Government has to decide which way it wants to go but it cannot eat its cake and have it too.
Having said all of that there is a case in Argentina and Belize where the sale of lands in Belize and bonds in Argentina were legally done but were vastly undervalued leading to criminal investigation. Against this background then the Guyana Government has precedent in global politics for moving against legal policies that carried stink moral violations.

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