Judge and jury

Nov 18, 2022 Letters

Dear Editor,

I simply looked at the caption, “QC Principal says Judge intimidated Vice-Principal over incident involving child” (SN November 17), and I shrank in disbelief. A Principal compelled to complain about a Judge over a child? This can’t be, shouldn’t be; not with the official titles and elevations of the good, upstanding citizens identified. Except that it is.

I looked at the online caption, and didn’t read a word more. Though the story may have a score or more sides (head teacher’s, jurist’s, two kids, bystanders, and that of the deputy), my position is simple: matters should not have degraded to this. No matter the gravity of the issue, this should not be, regardless of who was right or wrong. Not in any institution of learning for children. Not with the prestigious and reputable players involved.

The only judgement that I will pass on the judge is that he should have known better, held himself more in check. I wish that the words and actions of the principal of the most renowned centre of instruction in this country didn’t have to be made public. This is of the differences between two children, the way those unfolded, where those developments have now taken us. I regret that the arm of the law at senior levels can be summoned (or influenced) to be present in less than a heartbeat, and with others still higher in the police food chain to be embroiled in what was the routine issue of youthful overstep, an educator’s on the ground wisdom, and all that has since ensued in the simmering upheavals of what Guyana has become.

I am thinking of that time of yore that if I were able to contact my dad about something like this in school, I may not be alive today. He would have had no interest in who was right or wrong. One more thing: no teacher would have had to fear his presence, though he was built like a heavyweight wrestler. I assure the Honourable member from the realm of local jurisprudence that I make no comparison, or cast any aspersions. But this I do put before all of us: his place was to be immovably affixed to his chambers. That is, unless there was clear and present danger to life and limb, I would go so far as to offer peace of mind.

Editor, I am thinking of our call to judgment, and how we can often mangle that which is the thinnest of lines separating man from monster. Whither our reserve? To where has gone that hesitation, that restraint from rushing into any fray, including what may be adjudicated to be unworthy of anger, an excess of zeal, and what follows? This was about children, and if we cannot manage ourselves better than the children, then I don’t know how we will ever rise above where we are hopelessly, dreadfully mired. This is not about how well, or how poorly, the instructor onsite managed the situation. It is about how we fail to observe certain protocols that civility and plain common decency requires. Pardon me, as I add, and the dignity becoming of certain offices.

Perhaps the principal didn’t do the best that she was capable of in containing the situation within the perimeter of Thomas Lands. Then again, the halls of justice and its extended arm are a mere stone throw away. I can’t begin to imagine what the technology of today has unleashed. The other day I read of a citizen with a cutlass who went into a school complex in Berbice. Only a scooter experienced his presence. Try as I may, I cannot help to put the judge’s presence in the QC compound and all that happened there with that armed fellow in Berbice. One came with steel, the other with a variation of it.

As I leave, I ponder these and other developments involving the legal fraternity, I reach this crossroad. If this is of officer(s) of the law in public action, then the private ones can only be subject to the worst of interpretations. And with the way our society reacts to anything and everything these days, from the possibly innocuous, to the likely frivolous, to the definitely raucous, then I shudder to visualize how this wondrous vision of ‘One Guyana’ can emerge from its triple or seven-digit distance (in miles) to where we need to go and get, and which looks less and less attainable when these underpinnings surface, and tell us who we are, and what we have for a society and citizenry. If this is what results from our learned, our admired, our achievers, then I am at a loss as to what occurs at levels not so gifted. This explains our daily horrors, political and social.

Sincerely,

GHK Lall

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Judge and jury

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