Dear Editor,
I wish to make my position on the Sharma-v-President Jagdeo issue quite clear as the various currents tend to obscure the fundamental dimensions of the issue.
My position is based on ethical principles, all of which are quite familiar to most Guyanese:
Firstly, there is the principle that when one is involved in a dispute with someone else or many other persons, then no individual from either side would be morally justified in sitting in judgement on the issue.
In common parlance, there will be a clash of interest, if not bias. In the specific case, involving Sharma and the President, the President was judge, jury and executioner as far as I understand his involvement.
Secondly, there is the principle that the penalty imposed should be commensurate to the gravity of the offence. We argued in 1993 that the “Narcotics Law” was unbalanced since it had a fixed minimum penalty for any offence committed against the law, whether it was a school boy found outside Metropole cinema with a piece of “weed” or one of the big ones, a baron, caught with the harder stuff as he left the airport — the minimum penalty was three months in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Clearly, the two offences do not warrant the same penalty. I hold that President Jagdeo’s penalty of four months closure of Channel 6 is not commensurate with the offence committed, but is calculated to cripple the enterprise permanently.
Yours faithfully,
Fr Malcolm Rodrigues SJ
