“I propose that there be Bail Court on weekends to deal with the question of bail for serious offences and the Ministry of Legal Affairs must be more vigilant in sanctioning the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Guyana Police Force where they fail to secure an extension of time to keep the suspect in custody where the time allowed has elapsed,” he said while speaking during the budget debate on Friday.
“I also would like to propose that we review our laws to make it easier for suspects to sue for wrongful imprisonment and police brutality,” Bond said, adding that these incidences of “barbaric abuses” must be a thing of the past. “I, having been a victim of such atrocities on December 6th 2011, can attest to the failure of not only the system of Justice but also the brutal stab at our human dignities as Mr. Errol Watts the officer in charge of the ground troops who shot at innocent Guyanese now enjoys a promotion courtesy of his superiors and the blood of innocent protesters,” he said.
Further, Bond called for the putting in place of an Ombudsman. “Mr. Speaker, a functioning, well funded Office of the Ombudsman is one of the goodies I would have expected in the Honourable Minister’s little bag, to provide relief to those that fall in the category of vulnerable groups,” Bond said.
He had earlier in his presentation explained that the word budget came from the archaic French Bougette – a little bag.
Bond said that as developing countries are confronted with new challenges in whatever sphere, they have reached out to the private sector and other interest groups and have sought to establish partnerships to meet those challenges.
“The thinking behind establishing Public/Private Partnerships was to involve the private sector’s growth engines, its competitiveness and innovation in projects that would transform the lives of the populace and the landscape of the country,” he said.
“Mr. Speaker, the formulation of a system of prioritising programmes, upon which this $2.1 billion is spent, should be undertaken using the same principle that obtains in private/public partnerships. In this way the Government will be able to utilise the wealth of expertise at the disposal of the Guyana Bar Association, the Guyana Association of Women Lawyers, the wider pool of Judges and Magistrates and the entire Guyanese legal fraternity both foreign and domestic,” Bond said.
Bond called for the justice sector to employ more use of technology, saying that Judges and Magistrates “still take copious notes by hand wasting much needed judicial time and draining our legal luminaries.”
“They have been shouting into their ears that we are in the 21st Century where our courts should be equipped with every modern technology whether stenographers or real time voice data compilation which I believe will deliver the service the Guyanese people needs,” Bond said. He noted that it is commendable that the Government is seeking to build and rehabilitate buildings “but buildings do not translate to justice or quality of service.” He said that new buildings must go hand in hand with new policies and well trained personnel who are adequately paid, adding that these are areas where monies will be well spent.
