In the context of Guyana, last Friday’s decision by the Court of Appeal was not a surprise to me. The government had its back on the constitutional ropes and the majority judges accepted some extremely strange mathematics – what some are now referring to as ‘legal mathematics’ – and found in its favour. Perhaps remembering what occurred under his regime, where the court also split in his favour during his controversial bid for a third presidential term, Leader of the Opposition Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo, although accepting the court’s decision, saw nothing wrong with this decision not to return to parliament until the final decision comes from the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ)! Questionable as it is, last Friday’s decision merely returns us to the 2015 governance status quo: it did not attempt to go to the roots of our system of governance and thus does not come close to the decision given by former acting Chief Justice Ian Chang in 2014, which I referred to as ‘The most reactionary decision in our post independence history’ (SN: 05/02/2014).
Of course, the government is also still not totally out of the woods. Eager to accept the ‘legal mathematics’ of the Court of Appeal, it should be even more eager to accept the decision by both courts that dual citizenship is illegal and so re-enter the parliament with a list shorn of such persons.
But if past behaviour is anything to go by, it will not do so and will appeal that decision to the CCJ, and just as it was claiming that it was a legal government although no stay was accorded, it will seek to convince us that until the CCJ speaks the issue of dual citizenship has not been finalized and thus such of its members as are dual citizens can legally return to parliament.
One thing Guyanese could thank the PPP/C for is taking us within the judicial ambit of the CCJ. Countries such as ours must routinely have foreign mediators if they are to successfully smother their frequent quarrels and create governance mechanisms by which to live in peace, and some of these interventions have been more successful than others. After years of killings, the United States government of Bill Clinton underpinned the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland: a peace that still largely exists although the governance structure has faltered. The developed neighbouring democracies of Australia and New Zealand more or less turned a blind eye and allowed a general to establish autocratic rule over both sides of the ethnic quarrel in Fiji, and in Sri Lanka, where external influence was weak, the majority Sinhalese massacred tens of thousands ethnic Tamils. In Guyana, the persistent American and British presence is yet to bear significant fruit, but talk about their irrelevance and the importance of nationals solving their own problems is a certain indication that one does not even comprehend the nature of the problem the country faces.
By taking us into the CCJ, the PPP/C has allowed our Caribbean partners to have a significant input in our national management, and like judges at this level of operation should do, one must hope that they have a thorough grasp of the uniqueness of our condition. One of the cases before the court is that having to do with the appointment of the chairperson of the Guyana Elections Commission and in modern times the manipulation of elections is usually focused around the elections commissions. We have seen only recently that the United States government has sanctioned members of the elections commission of Congo, although it has left the government that resulted from the flawed elections in place. That is perhaps because it was not the preferred choice of the incumbent regime, that had its hands in the wrongdoings of the elections commission that won the day.
The case under discourse will soon also arrive at the CCJ and both of these cases require timely outcomes if the decisions are to be meaningful. The Barbadian case involving Professor Eddy Ventose demonstrated that the court can act expeditiously when it considers it necessary. In that case, the professor was concerned that although on 8 May 2018, the Barbados Court of Appeal had stated that he was qualified to vote at the forthcoming national elections of the 24 May 2018, the chief elections officer had refused to register him. He took the matter to the CCJ and in an unprecedented Sunday sitting on the 13 May 2018, it directed the CEO to ensure that Professor Ventose was registered before 12 noon on Monday 14 May 2018 or possibly face contempt of court proceedings, which could result in imprisonment and/or fines.
There is among us a school of thought that the kind of ethnic strain this country is persistently under only relates to politics and does not negatively affect other social relations. One only had to experience the level of dismay and exhilaration on the two ethnic sides after last Friday’s decision to realise that this kind of trauma must affect genuine cooperative living. Indeed, to believe otherwise would be contrary to most of what the government preaches about social cohesion, for if positive speaking and doing is expected to have positive long-term results, we must expect the same of negative approaches. That is, if we believe that events that lead to ethnic co-operation, such as those at present being pursued by the Ministry of Social Cohesion – trust building, caring, sharing, sensitization and anti stigma campaigns, etc. – can lead to positive results, then we must also allow that those that exacerbates ethnic tensions in such an important area as political cooperation, will also lead to increased all-rounded negative ethnic perceptions and behaviour.
In the interest of personal and collective security and development, our existing in the same geographical space depends upon our cooperating relatively closely, but it would be a huge mistake to associate this with increasing mutual respect and forbearance. This kind of mistaken thinking led the PPP/C to either believe, or think that it could convince us that ethnic trust could have developed in Guyana in the context of, at least, the perception of ethnic suppression. That experiment has taken us to a place where its victims will do almost anything to keep the PPP/C from government.
Oh, what a tangled web when we practice to deceive!
