Dear Editor,
A fixture on the calendar for lawyers is the Annual Bar Association Dinner which I attended last Friday evening and which I thoroughly enjoyed as usual. One of the main objectives of this function is to welcome newly qualified lawyers, graduates from the Hugh Wooding Law School. Of the 23 graduating students this year Guyana boasts, not for the first time, of having the best graduating student, Ms Thandiwe Benn. Cameron & Shepherd, the law firm to which I am attached, would also take great pleasure shortly in presenting to Ms Benn the Cameron & Shepherd Prize for Best Guyanese Graduating Student in Civil Procedure.
At the event we heard of the commendable plans of the GBA by President Mohamed Khan, of the Government’s programme by the Attorney General, Anil Nandlall and a great feature address by Commissioner Dana Seetahal. Thandiwe Benn replied on behalf of the graduating students. Vidyanand Persaud closed the deal with an uproariously funny presentation. The fare was great and the company exceptional – a wonderful evening all around.
While the GBA has taken commendable interest in welcoming newly qualified lawyers to the profession, which plays, along with other professions, an important role in the nation’s affairs, it appears to be uncharacteristically reticent about the failure to appoint as senior counsel those lawyers in our midst who for decades have contributed to legal learning in Guyana by the level and quality of their work.
The last appointments were made in 1996 and the time is long overdue when consideration ought to be given to the immediate appointment of those who have been knocking on the door for at least ten years. Topping the list are three names who are well known in the legal profession. It is widely acknowledged that the appointment of these lawyers as Senior Counsel has been unjustly delayed. There is no good reason why these appointments cannot be made tomorrow. Consideration can then be given the day after to the other lawyers who qualify to be appointed.
Guyana is the only country where a lawyer who is not specially favoured has to practise in excess of twenty-five years before consideration is given to his/her elevation. Normally, a distinguished career spanning fifteen to twenty years is sufficient in the UK and in our region. This situation arose in Guyana probably because at an early stage as an independent nation, political considerations seriously distorted the criteria for appointment. Ashton Chase, Miles Fitzpatrick, Clarence Hughes and Doodnauth Singh, among our greatest lawyers, all alive and two still in practice, were the first who were visited with the Burnham wrath and denied promotion to senior counsel for more than a decade because of political opposition to the PNC. In Clarence Hughes’s case, he earned Burnham’s ire because he dared to represent Burnham’s first wife in divorce proceedings brought by Burnham after he was Prime Minister. They were only elevated after Burnham died.
Unfortunately, political considerations, never far in the background, have been allowed to once again creep into the selection and award process that ought to be completely divorced from politics. A distinguished career in any field is built by hard work and dedication. Recog-nition of professional achievements can only be judged by peers, not by politicians.
While urgent consideration ought to be given to the appointments I suggested, discussions should immediately commence between the Bar Association, the Attorney General and the Judiciary for the establishment of a fixed mechanism which will permanently take the process completely out of the hands of politicians.
Yours faithfully,
Ralph Ramkarran