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Reforming our minds is the first priority

Oct 29, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – The back and forth continues regarding the substantive appointments of Guyana’s Chancellor of the Judiciary and the Chief Justice.  The latest from the PPPC Government, via the Attorney General (AG) has to do with who should initiate discussions, who has to agree, and how it must conclude (KN October 25).  Also, the AG is on record as emphasizing the importance of the upcoming countrywide consultation for constitutional reform.  In the space of a few clever phrases, the AG has managed to place the burningly urgent issue of the confirmation of the chancellor and Chief Justice inside a process that has a long way to go, and from which the progressive is uncertain.

Preparing for and moving ahead with an overdue constitutional reform process is something that only should be hailed.  But for true, deep, and meaningful reform to be, the first challenge at hand for Guyanese is how to steel ourselves towards reforming our minds.  That is, how to approach, analyze, and adjust what is in our heads, and almost immovably fastened, unshakably nailed.  Unless there is some readiness for fair and principled listening, some actual reasonable hearing, throughout Guyana, we will not get what we need, what we must have, out of constitutional reform.  In other words, Guyana will get nowhere, and remain helpless fixed to where it has been stuck for several decades

The chancellor’s and Chief Justice’s plight, we say it is an embarrassment, stands as a test case before us.  In his sharing before the University of the West Indies panel, Guyana’s AG found it fit to speak to the sequence that should be, as matters stand currently, relative to the appointments of the two most senior officers of the local court.  What is public is that the Leader of the Opposition has taken the bull by the horns and articulated where he and his group stand.  It should not matter who goes first or second, or who should take the initiative and have the first say. We think that that is standing on protocol.  In fact, given that the political opposition has bared its hand on where it is with these two appointments, half of the uncertainty has been removed from the equation.

It follows that the government, with the President speaking for it, has to take matters from there, and come out just as clearly, and say that it is for or against one or both of the two names in the judicial appointments hat.  All this going around in circles, using hedging words and phrases (who should go first), and employing delaying tactics (constitutional reform process) does not facilitate the best of reputations for this country. This is a little of what came out in couched terms in the UWI discussion in which the AG participated.

On a separate note, more Guyanese are filing legal challenges against the Government of Guyana, and its overall management of the nation’s oil business.  It goes beyond saying that it is imperative that the chancellor’s and Chief Justice’s positions no longer languish in this suspended acting state.  Our topmost court officers need the reassurance that their substantive appointment(s) are above the political fray, and their confirmation presents persuasive evidence of the confidence placed in their neutrality and integrity above all other things, including judicial wisdom and skill.

The fact that ExxonMobil has already signaled that it will join itself as an interested and possibly impacted party to local legal actions filed against the Government of Guyana, only serves to raise the bar on everyone still higher.  We need our jurists to focus on the matters at hand, and not wonder if their every word, their decisions, will be subject to second guessing and influence their consideration or worse, still, that reasons are drummed up to attach political colouring to their rulings, which must not only be seen as independent of taint, but accepted as such.

There can be no question that we need for the chancellor and Chief Justice to be confirmed quickly.  There is no hesitation also in advancing that significant constitutional reform is needed.  First, we must learn to reform our minds, to extricate us from the mental swamps in which we love to swim.

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