Dear Editor,
Janette Bulkan, in a letter appearing in your last Sunday edition, points to two features of laws governing presidential immunity from prosecution, which clarify some of the confusion surrounding this issue.
She is correct, the immunity is abridged and neither absolute in time nor in circumstances. Should it have been then we would be into an “imperial” system where the emperor is elevated into a superhuman, “super-citizen” status exempting him from culpability and its consequences. That we should have, in a post-colonial polity, conceived and approved such a system, violative of the principle of equality before the law, is not only unthinkable but in its own way, demeaning of the rest of us.
There can be no legal or moral justification. In other nations presidents are impeached, imprisoned, and the result is not institutional collapse.
Here in France with a presidential immunity that borders on what one commentator classified as the “regal”, former President Jacques Chirac, once his two terms were run, was hauled before the courts on a series of charges based on electoral list padding. Electoral lists were inflated by employing an excess of friends at the municipality of Paris, while he was mayor there. He was eventually found guilty and sentenced to two years jail (sentence suspended) for “diverting public funds” and “abuse of trust”. The offences pre-dated his presidential terms. In fact Mr Chirac’s lawyers told the courts that their client was in a medical condition that prevented his full recall of the events. The technicality here is that the fact of having occupied the highest office by no means guaranteed Chirac life-long protection from prosecution. The examples from other jurisdictions are numerous.
The process of constitutional reform that is supposed to take place in the future in Guyana ought to address the contradictions and anachronisms we have inherited. In the case of Mr Jagdeo and the people about him, the question in my mind is whether Brassington and others now threatened by Jaipaul Sharma, could argue that they were merely carrying out presidential orders and that since the source of their actions is, in legal terms, impeccable, then it could not be a case of punishing the people below when the source is untouchable. A ridiculous contradiction ensues. The fact is that as Dr Bulkan says, even with the provision of Art 182 of the Constitution, it is clear that the fact of no longer being in office removed clearly the immunity from prosecution enjoyed while any president held office and performed functions either in a private or public capacity.
The headline “President kills wife and claims immunity” or “ Transfers ten billion to US account” is only an example of the reductio ad absurdum” to which we pretend to find unimaginable
Yours faithfully,
Abu Bakr
