What is law, fair, just in Guyana today

Oct 30, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

---

(Kaieteur News) – Often, I absorb developments in Guyana related to what is claimed to be law, fair, and just, and I am reminded of one of those ancient images of thousands of years ago.  Think of a cart where the wheels were square or rectangular.

The movements in the journey, short or long, were that grindingly hard around the edges, that jarring on the flat lines, and that rocking in its sophistication, or lack thereof.  In the best verbalization I can manage, it is a revolution that is jagged and choppy, and leaves many asking what is it that Guyanese now live with, millennia later, when modernity and democracy have become national watchwords.

A man shoots and kills a cop over a private transaction that never got off the ground, and in a jiffy, bail is granted.  Sizable, for sure; but such was the readiness and rapidity of the court’s decision, that one has to wonder what other circumstances, what other ingredients, had a bearing on that deliberation, conclusion.  Guyanese, especially the family, know who is dead.  But what they didn’t know with the greatest clarity was who is who, and who can vouch for whom.  The long arm of the law, or the deformed nature of its fingers.

It leaves a cold and chilling feeling around the vicinity of the neck, enough to make the hairs present stand on end.  It wasn’t in the line of duty that the cop was shot dead, but it is still remarkable that his colleagues are so, shall I say, laidback and unbothered by how the law at which some of them toil so honestly moves so mysteriously, and all the while so radically differently.  It has been said that the law is an ass, and without justification.  The better conclusion from situations that follow a certain course is that there are those behind the law who make it into an ass.  What that makes them to be, I have a few colorful descriptions, but had better hold them in reserve.  For the mere mention could lead to an example being made of people like me.  And then who would be on trial?  People like me, or what is called a system of law and justice in Guyana?

An acting chancellor goes on leave on her own free will, only to return and she is sent on leave again.  On this occasion, her leave taking is seemingly involuntary and with another distinguishing feature.  It is permanent.  Perhaps, after a lifetime of being engaged in the realms of the law, it was time for her to prioritize pursuing new interests.  Has happened before elsewhere, so Guyana is catching up with what is fashionable in other parts of the developed world.  What were the incentives offered in that fateful, high-level conversation that made her go placidly on her way?  It could have been that she was made an offer that was just not in her best interests to refuse.  But is this how, after all the sweet, comforting chatter about rules and respect, the way in which things of this sensitive nature are finalized?  What they now peter out to, in an almost casual, clearly disdainful manner?

This isn’t a matter involving an entry-level clerk, but a chancellor of the judiciary, the highest position on Guyana’s greasy judicial pole.  With one arranged departure, two positions opened up, with the specially selected standing by in the wings.  That it more than an antiquated cart wheel that is square.  It is one big and deep black hole that is bottomless in its judicial possibilities.  When things are too neat and sweet, that is then I start to get worried, breakout into a cold sweat.  Pardon me, but what I am seeing, what I think Guyanese have been given a ringside seat to, is how premeditation and prearrangement work hand-in-hand in this country.  When there’s this type of substance that calls itself honorable and principled in Guyana, then the stage is set for what follows for decades to proudly and grinningly calling itself honest and fair and just, too.  Some may see subversion of processes and disregard for the reactions of citizens.  I see the way things are, what is part of a continuum, with a vast distance still to go.

Democracy or deterioration for expediency, that’s the challenge before all Guyanese.  Constitution, or the constitution of men that twist what is before them to suit their visions.  The fact that there was little of the subtle in both the murder reduced to manslaughter (and bail), and the heavy-handed circumventing of the judicial deadlock confirms how what is called law, what is fair, and what is just will be in the future.  The foundation was just laid, and against the laws of physics it fell on the heads of Guyanese.

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

---

• fair, GHK Lall, Guyana law, Law

---