An encounter with Justice Navindra Singh in the supermarket

Jul 18, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Each day in Guyana, memories and reflections tell the story of unpredictable life in Guyana and their Freudian impact on me. I was about to open the freezer door in the supermarket to take out a packet of chicken liver for my dog when reaching for the freezer door also was a judge I have known in an earlier life.
He said; “Like you don’t remember me.” To which I replied; “How can I forget you?” Navindra Singh was very helpful in my struggle for justice at the University of Guyana. And as we spoke, memories were invoked of how brave he was to take on a case for me against the powerful government of Bharrat Jagdeo, a case that we both won and lost at the same time. An explanation is detailed below.
We talked about his approach to sentencing as a judge and since nothing sensitive and confidential was spoken, I don’t think he would object to me writing about it. But I will call him first just to make sure.
In that previous life I was the Vice President of the University of Guyana Workers’ Union. The Council of the University had voted by a narrow margin not to renew the contract of James Rose as Vice Chancellor. It appointed Mark Kirton as Vice Chancellor. The next day, President Jagdeo, acting through the medium of the then Education Minister, Henry Jeffrey, cancelled Kirton’s appointment.
The union and the students’ body sought an injunction against the ruling and got it from Justice Winston Patterson. Attorney-at-law Navindra Singh agreed to do the case for me pro bono on the recommendation of a friend of mine. It was at this juncture that I got to know Navindra Singh.
Kirton was not allowed to continue because UG’s lawyer, Ralph Ramkarran (is he still UG’s lawyer, I hope not?) informed the Pro Chancellor that Justice Patterson’s order of certiorari didn’t not include the retention of Kirton. Rose came back. Khemraj Ramjattan at that time wrote an elegant letter in the newspapers criticizing Ramkarran’s legal advice to the university to ignore Justice Patterson’s ruling.
I went to Navindra Singh’s house that night on Camp Street with the head of the student union, Jason Benjamin, and trade union leader, Norris Witter to ask him to file contempt charges against the Pro-chancellor. It never happened so in the end, President Jagdeo, Henry Jeffrey, Ralph Ramkarran and James Rose won out and Mark Kirton and us, lost. We didn’t lose fairly. We lost because Bharrat Jagdeo and Henry Jeffrey and Ralph Ramkarran were part of a state apparatus that did what it wanted in Guyana at that time.
It makes you want to throw up when you read Anil Nandlall’s daily ruminations in the newspapers about the rule of law being violated, Bharrat Jagdeo’s nonsense about political victimization of PPP supporters at his weekly press conferences and the arid sermons about violations in the letter section of the newspapers by Donald Ramotar.
All three of these former PPP Leviathans should be ostracized by civilized society. Sadly, we don’t have such a society in Guyana.
So where are these players now? Jagdeo may very well face the court on criminal charges. Henry Jeffrey does a weekly lamentation on the wrong roads the PPP Government took, a government in which he was a Minister for 18 years (God, that’s a long time!) and the cul-de-sac the present government is driving towards. We are still waiting to read definitive accounts of the depravities of the PPP’s journey when Henry was Minister.
Ralph Ramkarran was denied the presidential nod for the 2011 general election by Jagdeo in preference to Donald Ramotar became embittered and left the PPP. I honestly cannot admire Ralph but I have to admit as an analyst that I believe he would have won the 2011 elections for the PPP.
Justice Patterson has retired from the High Court and is now the Ombudsman. I plan to see him soon about my UG contract termination ruling by his predecessor.
Mark Kirton returned to Guyana the past week after retiring from the University of the West Indies. We met last Saturday at Julian’s at Cummings Street and Sixth Street in Alberttown where I made a joke to the gathering that he was the Vice Chancellor of the University of Guyana for a day.
James Rose has faded into obscurity. Ramjattan is a senior Cabinet Minister. That leaves me. Well, all Guyana know my UG contract was terminated at the start of 2012 effectively bringing an end to my life as a UG academic and trade unionist.

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