An insult to our Constitution

Nov 16, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – In my opinion, it is not only the case that the 1931 UK-US Extradition Treaty is invalid and inapplicable to Guyana. The Fugitive Offenders Act, as amended in 2024, is in my estimation, repugnant of the Constitution and undemocratic in character.

The Fugitive Offenders Act of Guyana, particularly as amended in 2024, is not a piece of legal modernisation. It is a draconian blueprint for the systematic dismantling of the foundational principles of natural justice. It is an act of executive arrogance, so egregious in its design and so blatant in its contempt for liberty that it demands outright condemnation. This legislation does not merely flirt with tyranny; it formally invites it into the heart of Guyana’s legal system.

The Fugitive Offenders Act of 2024 is an unconstitutional and morally bankrupt statute. It is a document that flies in the face of centuries of jurisprudential evolution designed to protect the individual from the overbearing state. The legislation concentrates power in the executive with a voracity that would embarrass an absolute monarch, while systematically disabling the judiciary – the citizen’s last refuge – from performing its protective duty.

At its core, the amended Act is a masterclass in constitutional vandalism. Its most poisonous provision—the gutting of the “political offence” exception—transforms a bedrock protection of international law into a mere suggestion, subject to the whims of a politician. The notion that, under Section 8 the Minister, a sitting member of the executive, can decide on the political character of an offence is an affront to the very principle of the separation of powers.

The Fugitive Offenders Act places the fox in unequivocal charge of the henhouse, allowing the potential for the state to weaponize extradition against its political opponents under the thin guise of legal process. This is not law; it is the machinery of persecution, granting the executive the power to label any dissident a “common criminal” for the purpose of surrender. But the affront to the separation of powers does not end there. Section 14 (2) implicitly ascribes judicial powers to the Minister to order someone be committed to custody – a judicial power. A 2009 amendment to the Fugitive Offenders Act allows the Minister, under Section 3 A (a) to have someone committed or be kept in custody in the interest of justice. Section 12 grants the Minister the power to require a magistrate to proceed with an extradition hearing. It appears that we have forgotten the CCJ ruling in the Marcus Bisram case.

This comprehensive demolition of judicial authority makes a mockery of every principle of natural justice. The right to a fair hearing is rendered meaningless when the final arbiter is a political actor who has already sanctioned the surrender. But it gets worse. The 2024 amendments to the Fugitive Offenders Act fundamentally weaken the procedural safeguards that protect individuals facing extradition and, in doing so, create clear tensions with the Constitution. By permitting courts to admit “a record of the evidence of the case… including evidence that would not otherwise be admissible under the laws of Guyana,” the amendment strips away long-standing evidentiary protections that form part of the constitutional guarantee of a fair hearing.

This change allows decisions about a person’s liberty to rest on material that could not survive scrutiny in any Guyanese court, including untested hearsay or improperly obtained evidence. Section 24 (6) states, “Nothing in this section limits the evidence that may be admitted at any hearing to determine whether a person is liable to be extradited.” And later, the amendments even allow for the admission of opinions. Because extradition proceedings can result in prolonged detention and ultimately removal from the jurisdiction, the use of such unreliable or unchallengeable evidence is inconsistent with the constitutional demand that justice be administered under fair and rational procedures. The amendments further permit foreign witness statements, depositions, and prosecutorial certificates to be admitted automatically, even without proof of authorship or authentication, or any opportunity for cross-examination. This undermines a core tenet of natural justice: the right to confront and test the evidence used against one’s liberty. By allowing a foreign Attorney-General’s certificate to stand as sufficient evidence that a case exists—without requiring the underlying testimony to be tested in court—the law effectively outsources a judicial determination to a partisan official abroad.

This further collapses the traditional separation between executive assertion and judicial proof, and erodes confidence that extradition decisions are based on reliable, credible, and independently evaluated material. Such a regime violates both the letter and spirit of constitutional fairness because it denies individuals a meaningful opportunity to challenge the case advanced against them.

Taken together, the 2024 amendments create a process that invites arbitrary or politically influenced outcomes and exposes individuals to extradition on thin or untested grounds. They broaden admissible evidence to a degree that removes essential safeguards against error, fabrication, or abuse, and they shift the balance of power sharply away from the courts and towards foreign prosecutorial agencies. This erosion of judicial scrutiny is repugnant to the Constitution, which protects against arbitrary detention and ensures that decisions affecting fundamental rights—especially liberty—are made under transparent, rigorous, and just procedures. In weakening those protections, the amendments undermine not only natural justice but also the very constitutional structure that guards individuals from the excesses of state power.

Although an extradition court is not required to conduct a full evidentiary trial, its limited task of determining whether a prima facie case exists nevertheless presupposes that the material placed before it meets basic standards of authenticity, reliability, and judicial independence. A prima facie inquiry does not permit cross-examination as of right, but it does require the court to satisfy itself that the evidence is real, originates from legitimate sources, and can support a prosecution if left unchallenged.

The 2024 amendments undermine these minimum constitutional and common-law safeguards by allowing foreign witness statements, depositions, and prosecutorial certificates to be admitted automatically, without proof of authorship, authentication, or any meaningful opportunity to contest their integrity. In doing so, the amendments deprive the court of the ability to assess even the threshold reliability necessary for a lawful prima facie determination and effectively invite the judiciary to accept, untested, the assertions of a foreign Attorney-General or prosecutorial authority.

This collapses the distinction between judicial evaluation and executive allegation, and permits a person’s liberty to be restricted based on material that the court is legally disabled from verifying. Even at the preliminary stage of extradition proceedings, such a regime offends the principles of natural justice and undermines the constitutional guarantee that deprivations of liberty must rest on procedures that are fair, rational, and subject to independent judicial scrutiny.

The Fugitive Offenders Act, therefore, is not a law fit for a republic. It stands as a repudiation of justice itself and must be challenged, resisted, and struck down by the courts as the grave constitutional insult that it is. The survival of Guyanese democracy depends on it.

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

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