Dear Editor,
I laud the arrival of 10 new judges in Guyana’s court system. May they all be Solomonic. May each one hold fast to the codes of Justinian and Hammurabi. In serving in the local halls of justice. In homage to the majesty of the law. In honourably fulfilling their sometimes-ticklish adjudications.
We need these new judges to be of a breed that sets them apart. It starts with standards, a commitment by each to personal honour. The law must reign supreme; men who maneuver and manipulate justice for narrow ends must be stood against, their machinations, overtures, warded off. Can these talented 10 deliver? I hope so. Guyanese need them to do so. The territory is forbidding, the odds long. Still, the oath of office taken must be held paramount. For if not that majesty, then what are Guyanese left with, if not the crummy?
Guyanese must recall brawls about insurance, guarantee, elections, and what seeks to subvert protections. The 10 new judges must possess what sifts and inspects, then be about what upholds or thwarts. But only through what is about the law insofar that it can be interpreted for the greater good, without intervention, without ulterior considerations about upward mobility. The intrigues and allures will come. This is Guyana, and that must never be forgotten. There is no duty owed to political benefactors. The only duty is to justice. Guyana is new and it is struggling to separate the thorns from the tendrils that offer hope, fairness, and what is right. The judges are only as good as what is brought before them, and when I look at what happens in other institutions, the judicial shoals just got a shade more jagged, demands ever more energy that must be devoted to integrity.
For there is America and it is older than Columbus, perhaps existed before the indigenous who first made it their home. Most Guyanese must have heard about reservations by now, and that is where the law deposited them. Just like Japanese Americans about a hundred years ago in strange new homes surrounded by barbwire and machine guns. The law does have it checkered history amid all the talk about democracy and humanity. To the ten new judges, I urge remembrance of Roger B. Taney, a judge wearing the mantle of the US Supreme Court chieftaincy and developing the internal apparatus not to be of his curious judicial prowess. Or his jurist brothers who intervened in 2000 in a place called Florida and appointed themselves experts on hanging chads and the like and changed the course of history.
To the new ten, I say it is an extraordinary time to be sitting in judgement over matters of state, and the little people also. They must count like never before, or else that blindfold of the lady with the scales has holes in it. I may say further that her scales could do with a little finetuning. The new ten could be terrible or they could rise to the times and be about what is truth, thorough, tempered, and thoughtful. I am backing them, all of them, to be about the whole of the latter.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
