The irony of insulation

May 31, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

---

Peeping Tom…

Kaieteur News- In Guyana, the Constitution tries to uphold democratic order. But in respect to certain important appointments, it gives way to political deadlock.

Nowhere is this paradox more evident than in the appointment—or rather, the prolonged non-appointment—of the Chancellor and Chief Justice. For more than twenty years, these posts have remained vacant in all but name, filled by acting officers whose confirmations are held in limbo by political gridlock.

It is not that the country lacks a formula for these appointments. Indeed, there exists a formula: the President and the Leader of the Opposition must agree—an arrangement supposedly born of consensus but forged, like all political compromises, in the fires of mistrust.

When this formula was enshrined by the National Assembly, the prevailing sentiment seemed to be one of noble idealism:  inclusion in the interest of national unity. That no one paused to consider the obvious—that bipartisanship in Guyana is about as common as there being snow in Guyana—only confirms what we know about legislative optimism: it is the opiate of the perpetually elected.

The result is an institutional stalemate. For two decades, a country has gone without permanent appointments to the post of Chancellor. To blame the present administration   alone for this state of affairs would be dishonest. The rot has a longer lineage.

At the heart of this constitutional absurdity lies a deeper flaw—a system that, while pretending to safeguard judicial independence, has effectively politicized its apex. The Judicial Service Commission, created as a constitutional prophylactic against political intrusion, is entirely sidelined in the appointment of the Chancellor and Chief Justice. Why? Perhaps in part because the very persons to be appointed sit on the Commission, and so the Constitution in its infinite caution opts to have the Executive and Opposition decide instead. In doing so, it replaces the ghost of bias with its living embodiment.

Thus emerges a judicial paradox: a system that places its trust in political actors to protect the judiciary from political influence. It is a striking irony that the principle of political consensus in key constitutional appointments—now the root of a two-decade deadlock—originated not from within Guyana, but from a foreigner: former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Introduced as a safeguard to encourage bipartisan cooperation in a country that is politically divided, the idea was embraced.

Yet in an act of almost comedic misjudgment, the offices chosen to bear this burden of consensus were the very ones whose appointment process demands the greatest insulation from politics: the Chief Justice and the Chancellor.

I have suggested before that we look to the Caribbean Court of Justice for inspiration—a tribunal whose judges are selected by a labyrinthine commission. The Regional Judicial and Legal Services Commission, which handles appointments to the CCJ, includes everyone from civil society representatives to bar associations, public service commissions, and deans of law faculties. It is an elaborate bureaucratic ensemble designed not for speed but for sanctity.

Cumbersome? Certainly. But there is a certain beauty in its complexity—a deliberate design to prevent any single hand from steering the ship. It is, in essence, the architecture of trust, or at least of mutually assured suspicion. And perhaps that is what Guyana now needs: not simplicity, but sanctity; not consensus, but constraint.

Even former President David Granger’s decision—to advertise the posts—failed to escape the constitutional conundrum of who makes the final decision. You may open the window to let in fresh applicants, but if the doorway remains blocked by partisans, then nothing enters but drafts.

And so we return to the uncomfortable proposition: that sovereignty itself may have to yield. Guyana, like many of its postcolonial siblings, clings fiercely to the emblem of national autonomy even as its institutions buckle under the weight of internal dysfunction. We declare our commitment to regionalism with one hand while drawing lines in the constitutional sand with the other. The very idea of involving regional or non-national actors in our appointment process offends the nationalist impulse—an impulse that has long confused independence with infallibility.

Yet what other recourse remains? Another two decades of acting appointments? A return to the drawing board to draft yet another impotent formula, this time with thicker ink? Or shall we, in a rare act of constitutional courage, construct an independent mechanism—one that, like the CCJ’s commission, draws from the collective wisdom and caution of a region familiar with its own ghosts?

Even if we were to confirm the current acting officers in their roles—a temporary reprieve, no doubt—the fundamental problem would remain unresolved. The next vacancy would trigger the same impasse, the same ritual of finger-pointing and delay. We would still be prisoners of a formula that promises consensus and delivers gridlock.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)    

---

---