Dear Editor,
“I am happy they [the three suspected bandits killed by the Police on South Road] are dead and I don’t care about the details of a post-mortem. In fact why is the state even wasting money on them? My sentiment would be the same for ALL murderers and thieves.”
These are not the words of some uneducated idiot uttered in some heated exchange in some out-of-the-way ghetto. No, it is a direct quote from the Facebook page of Ms. Jaya Manickchand, an attorney-at-law and Member of the Guyana Elections Commission. Ms. Manickchand clearly does not believe that the constitutional guarantee of presumption of innocence applies to a certain class.
Ms. Manickchand’s post also reveals her perception and bias of crime. She cannot bring herself to even consider as crime, corruption a la Pradoville 2 or the appropriation of state resources by the political class. I doubt that she even thinks that a minister of government using a gun to inflict terror on another person as a crime, or the heist of Guyana for a few. For her, no doubt, crime is exclusive to a certain class and its perpetrators without rights.
It is frightening that a member of the ruling political class could be callous enough to have such a sentiment, and worse, arrogant enough to express it to the world. But it is a measure of the depth to which Guyana has sunk that she can remain a member of the Guyana Elections Commission.
Yours faithfully,
Christopher Ram