CCJ – is this where standards are?

Aug 16, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

Hard Truths by GHK Lall

(Kaieteur News) – It pains to listen, read, absorb the descendants of slaves and indentured servants make public representation that prioritises chasing after those condemned. Leakers. After all the great sacrifices made by foreparents, in the jaws of fearsome savagery, this is where matters terminate. An emphasis, a priority, on tracking leakers. Notwithstanding all the education, some of substantial quality, this is the sum of, shall I say, intellectual and ethical curiosity. The heart of issues, its commanding pull, is the first casualty that collapses. The next has to be we ourselves – me and you.

Coming out of Trinidad, some serious men and women with hard-earned reputations for illustriousness took the bull by the horns. There’s a problem at the CCJ. At the top. In some of the worst ways possible. Coming out of Guyana, the reaction was telling and chilling. Pursue the leakers. Is this for real? Is somebody serious here? The matter at hand is not of some government ministry with a suspected long programme of corruption and generalised wrongdoing.

The concern is that the system of justice at its highest elevation in this region now appears tainted. Smells rancid. Besmirched by its own hand, as alleged. There must be some significance attached to the implications of the allegations made. Not by political opponents in a political campaign. But by respected jurists against a brother. It calls for some guts, some trait in the character, to take such a momentous step. The anxieties were too tormenting-perhaps, to the point of being unbearable – for no objection to be tendered, no trail of disagreement to be imprinted.

Now the best that can be offered in reaction (in and out of Guyana) is to go after whoever breached walls, penetrated too far. In the situation, I wonder what is thought of the five CCJ judges who made their positions so clear? Maybe they should have let sleeping dogs lie. From the snippets, however, there was more than a trace of dysfunction at the CCJ. It was being eroded, and eroding, from deep inside. And not at some mundane level. I invite my fellow Guyanese to weigh this question. What if the situation, as identified, is allowed to continue? Could it be said that there are more opportunities for more travesties and miscarriages to be inflicted on the peoples of this region? Without the specifications of some of the hard disagreements among the judges, what probability for institutional self-improvement? Or, more ominously, what probability for further degradation, based on the stream of allegations?

Frankly, whoever leaked those emails did the CCJ and this region a huge favour. The CCJ administration (and the political overlords) are afforded the room to examine what went on, finalise the steps necessary for a cure. The region is now able to place the CCJ under a microscope and study from its people to its processes to its output. Languishing in ignorance. Believing that a straight deck and a fair deal are at work. Though such may not be the case. An injustice. Then that is a command for exposure and enlightenment. Some developments, some circumstances, are too vital to be left to resolve themselves on their own. A leak serves as a spur to action, a call to correction, however harsh. In the call to go after leakers, I go back to my slave reference. When the slave rebels were hunted down, it extended the ignominy of slavery. When slaves were recruited, or pressed into duty, to track down those fighting for their cause, they (the trackers) were damaging themselves.

I think that some damage has been done to Guyanese. I stop there. But if the level of trust, the high degree of confidence, that should repose in the CCJ suffers from the slightest decline, then that has to amount to a big consideration for free and pure functioning of the law and the dispensation of what passes for justice in this region. If not at the CCJ, then where? If not with those who sit at the CCJ table, then who? Should the CCJ lack the required ethical fibre to perform at the highest, cleanest level, then all is lost. Our ancestors made too many sacrifices in the fields, skimped in the homes, for matters to come to this.

(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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CCJ, GHK Lall, standards

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