Dear Editor,
In reaction to the submissions of Senior Counsel B T I Pollard appearing in SN on August 14, I am constrained to indicate as follows: a) the utterances attributed to the Minister of Education in relation to former Ambassador Brent Hardt were not the subject of commendation by me, either expressly or by ineluctable inference; b) no citation was made by me of the United Nations Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States. This instrument was egregiously introduced into the discourse by the scruff of the neck with scant concern for intellectual honesty.
In effect, the submissions of learned Senior Counsel were palpably misinformed and juridically misconceived. As a former diplomat and legal adviser of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, retired judge and concerned Guyanese, my intention was simply to elevate and clarify for interested stakeholders the juridical context in which a structured discourse of a diplomatic envoy’s functions may be pursued in the national interest.
The Senior Counsel further implied that “unconditional sovereignty” was juridically viable as a concept. In my respectful submission, however, unconditional sovereignty is not only alien as a concept to authoritative publicists on international law, but is, semantically, in the nature of a curious curiosity. Sovereignty, as a compendious concept of international law is a variable magnitude vulnerable to modification by relevant developments in international law. Postulated in other terms, sovereignty is no more than the residuum of competences, powers and rights which international law as a mature normative system permits state entities to exercise in relation to a determinable area of the globe and by its very nature may be voluntarily compromised without diminishing its juridical status. Consider in this context the relevant determination of the World Court in “The Wimbledon.”
Yours faithfully,
Prof Justice Duke Pollard
