Dear Editor,
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Of 19th century origins, it was given powerful resonance by Martin Luther King, and sparklingly reechoed by Barack Obama in his presidential run. Maurice Arjoon, former CEO of NBS, had his own long wait of a decade plus years, but the justice that has always eluded him is now almost within his grasp. Fifteen years is an eternity to wait for justice to be delivered, and this is even by Guyana’s standards. Good things come to those who wait, but the toll is heavy. Many times, it is almost unbearable. Maurice Arjoon has endured, outlasted his pursuers, and prevailed over his adversaries.
Unnecessary shame inflicted by callous others with great power to do harm has been his hard lot. They came in dogged fashion, and he suffered and struggled towards this day, not yet run its full course. I believe that if this was a regular employer-worker matter, in the strictest sense of the thought, it would have been long over, perhaps in less than half the time. When, however, there is reasonable and balanced consideration of some of the principals arrayed against Maurice Arjoon it is not surprising that his hour of victory and recompense took so long. What is surprising is that he actually emerged ahead. But has he really?
In the courts where a man’s honour and contribution to his times are weighed and measured, Mr. Arjoon has paid too much for those paltry millions that should wend his way in time. No amount of money, no words from jurists that point to rank injustice heaped and then further piled on this citizen, this worker, this officer, can compensate for the injuries he has carried on his back in the hell that men make of this Guyana. Again, what price justice when the years have come and faded? What cost to the human spirit and a man’s dignity when something like this happens, and lives on so insufferably because of the caprices and artifices of those who represent the dregs of the worst that this society can offer?
I know Maurice Arjoon, and this much I can and will say. Though undiminished in his will to fight for what is right, he is not the same man. Nobody ever can be, given what transpired, the way it did, and with regard to those responsible for this fraud in thinking, these trickeries in practice. I scanned the minutiae of pension and insurance and quantum and the rest, and I question why we are even talking about these elements, though I know that they must be so sifted. If ever there was an instance for special damages, the Maurice Arjoon matter fits the bill. There is another man, a similarly maligned officer of this difficult place called NBS, by the name of Kent Vincent. He waits for his own hour of jurisprudential wisdom and grace. May his time come, too.
There are some evils in this land that are beyond the abominable. I wonder how the perps face themselves in the mirror. I contend that they sleep the restless, tormented sleep of the deceitful and deceptive. Those Guyanese are the really guilty ones in what was a staged exercise from the inception, of which I have left out many more revealing and damning parts. The wrongdoers in this country only know one way to live, and it is not the kind that either Maurice Arjoon or Kent Vincent practiced, yet they prosper with power and in the purse. Sometimes I wonder if this thing that we call justice really does exist in all of its fullness and splendor.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
