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Why not look seek a foreigner for President?
A New York Times article dated June 28, 2019 was titled, “Supreme Court gives victory to GOP on gerrymandering and to Democrats opposed to census citizenship question.” Focusing on gerrymandering alone, Guyanese should pause and think for a moment, given where things are today.
The US Supreme Court, last Thursday, took itself from the fray in the stormy political matter brought before it.
In Rucho et al versus Common Cause et al, the holding of the court, by a narrow 5-4 margin, was that, “Partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.” It is worth repeating the current judicial contention: such political issues are outside the power of courts.
Though gerrymandering should not be unfamiliar to locals, a brief tutorial is quickly shared. At the core, it is about maps and redrawing them for political advantage as made notorious by Elbridge Gerry, a long-ago governor of Massachusetts. Such redrawn lines help pack numbers into spaces to favor certain specific partisan electoral outcomes; this is an ancient practice to benefit the dominant, almost always governing, group.
What confronts Guyana is not the redrawing of maps. But things that are as relevant, sensitive, and deep as the national soul here, because of what is involved: The count. The final count. Who got counted? Who should not be counted?
The last time around, a couple of years ago, it was about statement of polls. This time one of the immovable issues is about lists. Lists are the gerrymandering issue of today here.
Who is gaming what? The numbers? For a preordained result; well, at least, for that slightest of skew or tilt that could be through the advantage of a near invisible, almost inseparable, uncountable margin. The margin of victory over error; of triumph over impassioned, embittered adversaries. It might be better to call that for what it really is: blood enemies.
And if lists form part of the hard equivalent of local gerrymandering claims, then that means the court. Over there in the United States, and according to the New York Times article referenced above, the almost ideologically deadlocked Roberts court has “ruled that it is powerless to hear challenges to extreme political gerrymandering.”
This is where things stand now; and reference to holdings against, or supporting precedents do nothing to further the issue, other than to maintain the steely animosities in the public forum.
It is against this backdrop, that this simple question could be reasonably and mildly placed before Guyanese leaders and Guyanese citizens, voters all: why are certain matters of appointments and unspoken derivative issues (lists) placed in the realm of the judiciary? Matters that clearly are of political and racial contents? Do such types of matters really belong there?
The regional court has hinted–gone out of its way and even bent over backwards to signal-that it could serve better if such sharp, divisive political issues are handled in the political arena by the political participants. It seeks its own reprieve. There are no interested listeners.
Unheedingly, the latest word is to seek a chairperson from outside Guyana. Again, matters end up at the same sorry place: there are no trustworthy Guyanese. Without any trace of facetious intent, that could be taken to resolve other impasses: chief justice and chancellor of the judiciary (vacant around 10 years now); perhaps, commissioner of police and auditor general and governor of the Bank of Guyana to name a few of the harder choices, where there is reflexive suspicion of the worst.
And having gone so far, the president of this nation should best be left to the mind and majesty (clean and reliable, no doubt) of someone other than Guyanese. Why not go the whole nine yards?
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