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A political leader is being persecuted and every Guyanese should be angry
Dear Editor,
The Leader of the Opposition is an elected Member of Parliament. Over 109,000 people voted for him. Yet for months, he has been dragged through a legal process designed not to deliver justice, but to humiliate and break him.
This is wrong. And every Guyanese citizen should be furious about it.
He has not been convicted or found guilty of any crime, yet he is being treated as if he were a dangerous criminal—required to report repeatedly to the Ruimveldt police station, surrender his passport, and comply with bail conditions so severe they would devastate most people both financially, psychologically, and emotionally.
Ask yourself: why must he report to a police station at all? The police in Guyana have a well-known and deeply troubling reputation. If reporting is truly necessary, why not to a court registrar, or a trusted community figure, or someone seated there as a public official, or an Administrative public servant at the D.P.P. Chambers— someone known for integrity? Instead, he is sent to Ruimveldt police station, as if the goal is to humiliate rather than to monitor.
Bail is not a gift from the government. It is a right—guaranteed by the Constitution. And the law is clear: authorities must always choose the least burdensome conditions possible. You cannot pile on harsh conditions unless you can prove, without question, that lighter ones would not work. Courts in Canada have firmly established this in cases like R v Antic, and Guyanese courts have long upheld the same principle.
When bail conditions are set so high that an innocent man effectively cannot live a normal life, that is not justice—it is detention with extra steps. It is punishment before any verdict. Courts have condemned exactly this kind of “bail by stealth” in persuasive authorities like R v Brost.
When the government uses the justice system to silence, exhaust, and humiliate the man chosen by over a hundred thousand citizens to represent and challenge them in Parliament, it is not just attacking one person. It is attacking democracy itself.
The message being sent is chilling: oppose us, and we will use every legal mechanism available to make your life unbearable. Guyana’s greatest Chief Justices — Chang, Kennard, Bernard, George— understood this danger clearly. They consistently ruled against oppressive bail, because they knew that justice used as a political weapon is no longer justice at all.
This man is innocent until proven guilty. That is not a courtesy—it is the foundation of every just legal system. Stripping him of that presumption through cruel, punishing, and politically motivated bail conditions is a constitutional outrage. If we allow this to continue in silence, we are not just failing one man. We are giving up on the kind of country Guyana is supposed to be.
Regards,
M. Shabeer Zafar, barrister
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