Dear Editor,
Comments like those offered by the Minister of Finance in his 2017 Budget with respect to the progress on the reforms in the judicial system have to be rejected on all fronts. The Minister was quoted as saying, “the Government continues to place the highest priority on the maintenance of a strong justice system, given its role in upholding our civil liberties and maintaining the rule of law.” Where is this strong justice system that the Minister is alluding to? Such a system does not exist in Guyana and has not done so for a very long time, while the system as it is continues to deteriorate under the Granger government with these public measures of harassment of the top judicial official.
We have a strategic problem in the judicial system; it is a third-rate deliverer of justice, especially if you are poor and cannot raise bail money. The Minister of Finance in his 2017 Budget introduced a $1.6 billion IDB project that is aiming to provide:
- alternative sentencing interventions;
- the strengthening of the probation services;
- the design and implementation of a restorative justice programme;
- the implementation of case management and a court scheduling system;
- the training of judges and magistrates in the use of alternatives to pretrial detention;
- law reform.
My immediate response to this is: here we go again. Guyana has spent some $10 billion by way of foreign donor projects on Justice Sector Reforms and Citizen Security Programmes since 2007 and it has mostly come to naught. Guyana is still a crime-infested society that has a judicial system with thousands of cases in the backlog piles. It is unresponsive to the needs of the accused and violates the human rights of dozens of innocent men and women in a remand system that is totally malfunctional. There is no social justice for the poor and the working class in Guyana; not under Anil Nandlall and now ten times worse under Basil Williams because of serious legal administrative issues.
Under the previous administration, an Amerindian victim, one Mr Justin John languished in jail for seven years because the system was unable to deliver justice in a timely manner. Today it is an even worse situation, leading a President to release prisoners from overcrowded prisons. Good try, but there is a better way, put the people in front of judges and magistrates. But if the Granger administration is playing petty politics with judicial appointments, then the only option they have is releasing convicted prisoners.
It is unfortunate that after all these years, our policy-makers do not understand that development is not how much money we spend, but how much of that money actually benefits the intended beneficiaries. Where is the change for the poor and the working class that was promised at Whim in 2015?
It is the time that we as a society have the courage of conviction to advocate justice for all regardless of social status. It is up to the independent media to ask the tough questions of the DPP, Attorney General, the Public Security Minister and the President himself so that this trend of denying justice to the working class is reduced. This is not how the poor and the powerless must be treated. It is just plain wrong. How many more poor people who cannot afford to raise bail, will be forced to languish unjustly in jail for years?
Yours faithfully,
Sase Singh
