The way of the courts can be confusing. However, many people still believe that the court system is fair. Some would point to decisions that appear to be biased.
One case that readily comes to mind involved Clairmont Mingo, the Region Four Returning Officer.
He was detained by the police for days on private criminal charges. The police held him because they believed that he would be a flight risk. When the mandatory 72 hours were up the police refused to release him.
His lawyers went to court on a writ of habeas corpus and got a judge to order his release. Then something strange happened. The police decided to charge him with fraud and some other charges. They refused to release him.
When the lawyers went back to the judge he modified his order to bring it in step with the police. People were surprised. Many saw the judge’s decision as biased but the lawyers took it in stride.
Mingo was just one of the people arrested and detained. He was followed by several others of the same ethnicity. I am not sure that the cases would go anywhere and if they do, whether there would be convictions.
The most recent detainees were Colvin Heath London and attorney at law, James Bond. The nation is still awaiting the announcement of charges against these people. But that is not the end of the story. There is a thing called payback.
Many of these people are going to sue for wrongful detention, loss of liberty and a gamut of human rights abuses. The cases may drag out but they will be completed one day.
Winston Brassington and Ashni Singh are before the courts on charges akin to what Heath London and James Bond have been charged with. They went to court to have the charges dropped but the Chief Justice ruled that they must face the charges.
This creates an interesting scenario. The authorities may wish to save Brassington and Singh but in so doing, they would have to cast an eye over their shoulders at those they wish to persecute for similar offences.
And in the continued drive to establish ethnic superiority the Irfaan Ali administration is continuing full speed ahead to exclude Afro Guyanese and anything that appears to be in support of the coalition.
As President, David Granger reached out and secured buses, bicycles and boats for the myriad school children. The buses, to distinguish them from all others, were marked David G School Buses’. That stuck in the throat of the Irfaan Ali people. They could not see a bus secured by David Granger so they changed the marking on those buses.
The buses are now simply School bus Number X or Number Y. It is a wonder that the housing schemes like Melanie Damishana or Roxanne Burnham Gardens or Shirley Field-Ridley Square or Agnes Bend-Kirton Court have not yet been changed.
People still remember the haste to rename the international airport when it was the Timehri International Airport. The opposition PNC in 1992 had to remind these people who wish to recreate history that the name change required Parliamentary approval.
When the government changed, a petty coalition administration would have moved to change the name of the international airport. Instead, it embraced the name.
Former Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan, was moved to point out what he called the ethnicisation of Guyana.
He pointed to the Guyana Sugar Corporation which was akin to a black hole through which money would disappear.
Money has been disappearing into that hole for a very long time but the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union—GAWU—decided that Ramjattan was attacking sugar workers. It was not ashamed to say that the attack was against East Indians who could not justify the existence of the sugar industry.
The government decided to bring in tractors from the United States at cost of US$44 million, without knowing if the tractors would able to operate in the sugar fields. All it wanted to do was say that it spent money on sugar. It had already spent US$200 million on a new sugar factory that never worked. Spending on useless things was a norm.
In a few years there will be those of us who would see the sugar industry as a welfare fund for the PPP supporters. Just turn up at the end of the week, stretch out your hand and collect money. Whether sugar is produced is not important.
In the same way, it is not important to give to the people of Region Four the promised $25,000 by way of the COVID relief. Across the country, there are communities in which people of African ancestry have been ignored during the distribution.
And to think that there are people within the PPP who see this rampant discrimination but cannot say anything. It is like the house slave watching the field slave being beaten into the dust. “Thank God that is not me,” the house slaves would say.
