Why did Mae’s raise its fees by up to 42 percent?

Apr 06, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The polemic in this column is not about Mae’s. I am simply using the unbelievable hike in Mae’s school fees to examine the increasing disintegration of this country. Mae’s fee scandal is one; the other example will be horrible disparities in High Court sentencing.
These are just two scenarios that show there is no advancement of national conscience in 21st century Guyana. And the regression is accelerating. I will omit the parking meter fiasco from the discussion here, because that is so bizarre that to date it is the largest indication that the nation will not survive in the coming decades. I have written exhaustively on the ominous signs of the Hinds/Lewis/Chronicle nastiness, so I will omit that too.
The school was one of the leading rejectionists of the 14 percent VAT imposition on tuition at private schools. The society showed an intense dislike for that foolish decision by an increasingly wild, insensitive and floundering government going nowhere fast. The VAT tax was removed. The nation was relieved.
In what can only be described as a barefaced move in the context of how Guyana felt about the VAT tax, Mae’s has imposed a gargantuan increase in fees. The obvious question almost the entire nation will ask is – how can the school do such a thing; it is unreasonable.
But this nation has been suffering unreasonable behaviour since Desmond Hoyte lost the presidency and it accepts it in silence, that is the explanation for all the unreasonable things thrown on the people of this country since the Hoyte presidency ended. These crudities do not come from state power only – it takes in the complete gamut of society – judiciary, private sector, police, media, civil society, NGOs, local government structures, hospitals, etc.
So why did Mae’s do it? The answer is simple. Mae’s knows the nature of the society, so it knows it could get away with it. A High Court judge, Justice Jo-Ann Barlow reading from the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, said she doesn’t understand why young people are deterministically jailed by magistrates for small amounts of marijuana, because the law itself does not allow for mandatory sentences; there is an exit clause – Section 73. She described Section 73 in which a jail term can be avoided citing special circumstances, and one such situation is the age of the convicted person
Do you think magistrates will listen to her? Which person voiced an opinion when a teenager was jailed for six months for leaving Guyana for Suriname illegally through the routine speedboat route? Did anyone voice concern about a minibus conductor who found a spent shell on the road and was jailed for two years (I saw three spent shells on the Eve Leary seawall last week)? These mediocre judicial officers will continue to punish and destroy teenagers’ future because they know the country just could not be bothered. They know they will get away with the harshness. All over the territory of Guyana, police do random traffic stops. Why? They know they can get away with it. The Georgetown City Council and the Town Clerk will continue to exercise unaccountable power. Why? They know they can get away with it.
There is a horrible discrepancy in High Court criminal sentencing that is so graphic that I doubt any other society would remain silent about it. You can kill another human in Guyana in the most barbaric way and once you plead guilty, you get a sentence that is invariably less than twenty years. Accused have killed their mother, father, wife, children, and have copped a light sentence because of a guilty plea.
I met this judge in Survival Supermarket and I raised the glaring inconsistency in his sentences. I brought up the case of a girl who broke a bottle and stabbed her friend to death in front of the victim’s three-year-old daughter at a West Coast resort. She got ten years after a guilty plea. An identical situation occurred at a rum shop in Berbice. The accused got life. Last week, a felonious wounding conviction resulted in life. Juxtapose this against light sentences for accused that killed their parents.
The judge gave an explanation. He said that the Caribbean Court of Justice has set down guidelines for those who do not waste the court’s time by accepting guilt, and his sentences fall within those guidelines. I have been advised that is not exactly the case and the judge may be wrong. Terrifying discrepancies will continue in the High Court. Why? The judges know there will be no call from higher authorities for an explanation.

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