Government and Private Sector need to eradicate poverty

Dec 06, 2016 Letters

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Dear Editor,
The media will be dominated by discussions on the Budget 2017 for the next few weeks. I myself will refrain from making meaningful comment, but return focus to the dire need to raise income levels for the masses so that Guyanese can afford to acquire their own homes and provide for their families without being treated as welfare cases by the state.
I first wish to draw attention to the structure of our society and the massive social injustices and abuses meted out to the Guyanese masses. Societies have tended to be divided into the working class and the ruling class, or elites. I borrow this reference, but also propose to refine the ruling class or elites into what I refer to as ‘the system’. ‘The system’ includes wealthy business owners and their privileged directors, executive managers and similarly designated figures, and the upper level of government bureaucracy, which includes the ministers, their advisors and senior managers, and the justice system. The system also includes those lawyers and their agents who collude with the justice system to pervert the course of justice.
This classification facilitates a clearer distinction of the masses of workers and other powerless individuals on the one hand, and the system, or the people who are in control, on the other. Within this context, it is easier to see that the masses are at the mercy of the system, which uses its laws and regulations to keep the masses in check, while the people within the system, notably government ministers, wealthy business owners and their acolytes, are free from the law and the course of justice. Integral to the system’s control mechanism are the media and other mass communication which it uses to control the minds of the masses with propaganda and platitudes for the injustices suffered by the masses.
Some of the great injustices and abuses meted out by the system against the Guyanese masses have been those perpetrated in our court system. Our Guyanese youth, many of whom have been robbed of an education along with the opportunity to acquire a regular job, who have also been robbed by their employers because of their inability to reason and count, occasionally find themselves on the other side of the law as they resort to alternative means of surviving. Caught up in the criminal justice system without the financial resources to fund a pleading of their cases, they are occasionally left to languish in jail for inordinate amounts of time.
An examination of instances of those who belong to the system who commit crimes reveals that these persons make bail, and their lawyers and the legal system collude to drag out their cases almost indefinitely, on occasion jacking the court system to tamper with evidence, which ultimately results either in the case being thrown out or some similar version of events.
A fascinating example has been the recent case of a former minister and her subordinate who were recently found criminally liable for the alleged misappropriation and unaccountability, read theft, of in excess of $600 million of taxpayers’ money. The former minister’s case has been postponed on a number of occasions, but on one of those occasions, one of the lawyers for the prosecution told the judge that he could not find the page with the evidence/charges against the defendant.
This was not a case of the prosecution being stupid, but evidence of the possibility that the court system has been bought. Similar cases have occurred in the past, and will continue to occur, as it is clear that the people in the system can steal and commit crimes and pay their lawyers and the courts to subvert the justice system.
In regards to injustices committed against the Guyanese masses by the justice system in particular, while I do not condone the use of marijuana, or cannabis, some advanced countries have recognized the plant for its medicinal purposes, and have moved to decriminalize its use completely.
What is clear is that the use or personal consumption of marijuana within the context of new knowledge cannot be construed in any way, manner or form as a criminal act. In this regard, I submit that the justice system pursue avenues to have individuals incarcerated for the possession of the plant for personal consumption be immediately released from confinement.
I am personally suspicious of the benefits of marijuana for other than medicinal purposes, as I am sure are other concerned members of society are, so it is recommended that the release of the aforementioned persons be also accompanied by a nationwide education campaign warning against the consumption of marijuana for other than medicinal purposes, in a manner similar to the treatment of cigarettes.
Craig Sylvester

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