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New Judges
Kaieteur News – Guyana now has seven new Court of Appeal Judges. Good things come to those who are patient. The announcement from President Ali of these seven new judges is a cause for rising expectations. The machinery of the judiciary is now better equipped to move along less laboriously. There should be some clearing of backlogs, through more timely and efficient rulings on matters that have encountered a chokepoint in the judicial pipeline. There must also be a cautious procession as the seven new judges are ushered into a higher tier of Guyana’s court system. Allowance must be made for the wide range of inspiring human ideas and room to accommodate the extent of individual frailties.
We, at this paper, are looking forward to courageous judges and their judgments. We think that among the seven new judges, there is a wealth of judicial acumen, which should contribute to the delivery of wise verdicts that are characterised by independence. Having said that, there is cognisance that judges do not function in a vacuum, nor do they operate from some remote island that makes them out of touch with what is going on in the real world. Like any other person, judges have their biases and their inclinations, which the more disciplined and principled ones can manage, so that the greater good is served. This is of the greatest significance in Guyana, where almost everything is turned on its head, due to being seen through a partisan lens. The national interests are what must come first. We take a chance and anticipate that the nasty politics and unacceptable partisanship in the larger environment will not be allowed to intrude into the judicial arena and judicial weighing. Justice is not just blindfolded; it must also impress as being colorblind and blind to the pull of politics when the blindfolds are taken off.
Caution and inspiration should flow from other countries. One is a neighbouring one, because when the judiciary is subject to packing, then the outcomes are foregone. They are stacked against the standards of rational justice. In other words, men and women appointed by politicians frequently tilt their thinking and their judicial holdings towards what is believed to please those responsible for where they are. We have seen in Guyana how obscenely some politicians have reacted to a ruling favouring this country’s interests, and that should be all that is needed to appreciate the enormous pressures on judges and their rulings. Judicial integrity should prevail over any partisan expectations. Another piece of evidence of how politics can contaminate selections for the judiciary at different levels stands in the deformed situation involving the substantive appointments of chancellor of the judiciary and chief justice of Guyana’s courts.
Guyanese judges, old and new, stuck where they are or elevated to a higher level, cannot be unconscious of the way the winds blow here. How much of this impacts their interpretations of the law and their related decisions in sensitive cases is a matter for the future to disclose. Local judges, however, should also note keenly what is going on in the United States. In a nutshell, the judiciary is now looked upon as the last bastion of restraint and of constitutional integrity, in a country that has seemingly abandoned all of its once venerated standards, its powerful global leadership example. All of the judges have been appointed by politicians, yet some of them have manifested the fearlessness and honesty required by law and circumstances to maintain their independence in how they rule. Where the executive has run amok, and the two top lawmaking bodies in America have largely gone along to stay in favour, the judiciary has been that one beacon of light in the US. Guyanese judges can learn a lot from their US counterparts, more than they did in institutions of legal learning, and from the local environment.
We think that most of them should be up to the demands that will come before them. We also think that they will succeed in rising above Guyana’s dangerous political tides. Time will prove us either to be unrealistic, or well-grounded in what the seven new court of appeal judges join with their older colleagues to deliver.
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