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Melinda Janki

Feb 18, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Melinda Janki is more than an attorney-at-law.  Attorney Janki is more than one who takes up difficult challenges in difficult times in front of difficult people, who are consumed with power, deaf to any hearing, reasoning.  Ms. Melinda Janki is an activist with a heart, an energy level that is admirable and incredible, one with the courage to take on from chumps to champs, and walk away not only a winner, but with head held high.

A prestigious international award is now hers, this daughter of Guyana’s soil.  Now, she has been recognized for her years of dedicated service to those thankless issues that other legal eagles fly past at low altitudes, so that such concerns pass over their heads, are not part of their range of interests, possessing any vision that personally compels.  Any award for a body of work executed under varying circumstances that could come from a grouplike the Commonwealth Lawyers Association, acting in conjunction with LexisNexis, has to be worth more than the weight of its accompanying accumulation of accolades.

Ms. Janki’s work has been long, committed, and multifaceted in the many streams that have been touched and traveled. It compiles into a record that will endure for the people that were thought of, the issues prioritized and fought for, and the progress that has been made.  This was because one lawyer, one woman of substance, found the time and the passion for each such issue to be elevated before tribunals of justice.  It was so that doors could be opened a crack, so that opportunity for the small, the underrepresented, the forgotten, the scorned and the misused could grasp at a chance for a better life, a more dignified one.

The removal of the death penalty for heinous crimes is not a cause that many fight for in this country.  Guyanese may be recognized far and near for being a hospitable people.  On the other hand, they are not as widely known to be a forgiving people, or a forgetful one, when the issues and circumstances are of the impassioned kind.  The battle against the death penalty is one that Melinda Janki has made into a signature concern of hers.  It is not one with much of passionate following in Guyana, but for this Guyanese lawyer, it is right up here among what drives her to the heights.

The welfare of Guyana’s indigenous community has so many advocates, so many in places of power, and the power to make things happen, that members of that depressed and abused segment of this country’s population should be ruling the roost in various places, in events that count.  The reality is the opposite, with a native people largely powerless and endlessly manipulated, while left to fend for themselves to get by anyway that they can.  Melinda Janki has made their fight her fight, with the record to prove.

She has been the advocate for those who alarm locals because of the almost limitless freedoms given to ExxonMobil in Guyana (Esso).  Court cases filed, the Goliath of ExxonMobil confronted and challenged, and hard-earned legal victories eked out.  There was the singular achievement of getting the ExxonMobil (Esso) permits reduced by 75% from 20 years to five years, pursuant to local laws in operation.  There is something called law, and it comes into the fullest flower, when justice is served.  If only there were more Guyanese lawyers, who cared less about money and personal prestige and prosperity, then not even oil superpower ExxonMobil could be on the unfettered rampage that has been its defining attribute in this weak and prostrate country.

We at this publication have been pleased and proud to feature many profound contributions from Ms. Janki on where we are going wrong in the rich oil sector, the potential calamities relative to the environment and climate change.  It is our belief that Melinda Janki is battling for noble causes, while the majority of Guyanese men are retreating, if not scheming or hiding.  The Commonwealth – LexisNexis Lawyers Association Rule of Law award has a certain transcendent resonance to it.  Thanks to Melinda Janki for being there, leading the good fight.  Well done, deserving: take a bow, Melinda.

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