Dear Editor,
I wish to refer to Mr Vincent Alexander’s letter under the caption ‘Four Vice Chancellors ruled on the matter’ in your issue Wednesday, March 23.
I am one of the three students affected by Mr Alexander’s action as Registrar (ag) University of Guyana; Mr David Chanderbali, Registrar, was regrettably on leave for one reason or the other during the period in question.
The first point to note is that Mr Alexander is seeking to confuse the public by claiming that we were not students of the University of Guyana at the material time, because fees due had not been fully paid by Mr Sheik Mustapha, Mr Clairmonte Cox and myself.
We are all properly and fully registered as students of the University of Guyana to read for our law degrees. Our registration through the Department of Law and Faculty of Social Sciences for the programme conferred on each of us the status of bona fide students in the Department of Law, University of Guyana. The university never wrote either of us demanding fees, because it was known by officers of the university that we had individual applications to the Ministry of Finance for funding through the ministry’s revolving students’ loan fund. We were each told by operatives at the ministry’s Turkeyen campus office and central ministry that the individual applications were being processed. We relied on them.
Mr Clairmonte Cox was granted the first loan, and from the ministry’s records ‒ a copy of which he has ‒ he had until August 2006 to discharge the repayment, yet his results were withheld from 2003 until 2013. His results were released on Mr Alexander’s letterhead. A prudent reader may ask the lawyer’s question as to how valid these grades are that Mr Alexander in writing said never existed? Mr Vincent Alexander is hereby urged, and the media is strongly advised to go to the registry of the High Court on Avenue of the Republic to read carefully and see what Mr Vincent Alexander wrote to Mr Cox.
By his own words Mr Alexander said four Vice Chancellors had ruled on the matter, but neither of us was informed whether it was an assembly of Vice Chancellors as a body, or individually when each took office. He admits he was part of the process(es). Clearly the cardinal principles of natural justice were not observed. I hope Mr Saphier Hussain and other lawyers come to the assistance of Mr Sheik Mustapha and Mr John Marcus to have those decisions quashed by certiorari.
Mr Alexander shows no remorse about publicly accusing Mr Clairmonte Cox, Mr Sheik Mustapha and myself of the crime of conspiracy. We wrote the exams collectively on fifty odd occasions during the period. What is ironical and moreso laughable is that Mr Alexander as a diligent and competent Registrar, never had any of us prevented from so doing, either by personal action, or instructions to his officers in the registry or the invigilators. The crime of conspiracy is not a lonely soldier. We did not conspire.
Yours faithfully,
John Marcus
