Latest update May 13th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jul 31, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Examine with a meticulous eye, legislation, ministerial edicts, governmental guidelines and related action, and you will see there is hardly the intention to maximize freedom and to allow for the decentralization of authority, and to let power devolve to what the ancient Greek philosophers called the “DEMOS,” that is, communities and the people in general.
We had no legislation covering cybercrime. We now do. Look what it encapsulated – a frightening dimension that curtails free speech. After some serious hollering from society, the internecine clause was removed. But the fact that it was put there in the first place tells you about the Freudian instincts that have governed this county from colonial domination to fifty-two years of Independence. It is the instinct of authoritarian possession of power.
This assault on free speech in the cybercrime Bill is a frightening specter when you think of who put it there. It was the action of a set of politicians who arose to power after exposing the autocratic mentality of two former presidents – Jagdeo and Ramotar. These two past presidents would have seen that obnoxious clause as normal legislation.
Take a second example. The University administration has proposed to the government an amendment to the University of Guyana Act to remove sectoral representation on the Council of the University. At present, lawyers, doctors, women, Indigenous folks, farmers, parliamentary opposition, current government in office etc., each have a voting presence on the Council. The university contends that it constitutes interference in the administration. Removing that clause is commonsense and need not detain any further.
What is appalling is that in the proposed restructuring, there is no blueprint for the devolution of power in the university system. It means that the head of the university has total administrative jurisdiction that cannot be challenged. Our leaders simply have a sickening habit of not learning from the past.
The current head of the university may not practice hegemony after the Act is passed, but down the years we may very well have one who loves power. Parliament will amend the Act and not one, not one politician from the ruling coalition will have the intellectual decency to put mechanisms in place to stop administrative hegemony. What is at work in this country since British colonialism is the Freudian love for power.
Let’s take yet another example. The Bar Association attacked, and one can say viciously too, the statement from the Deputy Director of SARA, that the judiciary’s decisions in relation to money laundering investigation are a cause for concern. One of the silly aspects of the Bar Association’s statement is that the pronouncement can intimidate the judiciary. The Bar Association cannot see how it has ridiculed Guyana in the eyes of the world. If judges in this land can be scared of what is said about their rulings, then Guyana is further down the road to nihilism than I ever thought of.
The Bar Association wants the SARA official to apologize. Here clearly we see the Freudian fascination with power. The Bar Association is deeply contemptuous of free speech. Nowhere in the SARA statement was a particular judge named or a particular case cited. Yet for voicing an opinion of disagreement with the judiciary, the Bar Association wants the SARA official to apologize. If he does that, where does that leave the existence of free speech?
In which society other than a naked, nasty, oligarchic state, can a citizen or an organizational head or a minister not voice a dissenting view of a judicial decision? Why is the judiciary in a democratic society above being scrutinized? How can a society remain democratic if rulings by the judiciary cannot be commented on?
President Bush said he disagreed with a judge who ruled that the plug cannot be taken off from a brain dead patient. Ruling politicians voiced dissent at the court finding that parliament has to rule on the acceptance of Brexit. There was widespread denunciation of a judge’s decision to give probation to a youth after he drove onto a pavement killing four persons.
Magistrates and judges are extremely powerful people in any country. Only the constitution is above the judiciary. The judiciary can strike down any act of parliament or any proclamation issued by a prime minister or president or any edict from the Cabinet as being unconstitutional. To have such an institution remain insulated from public criticism is a dangerous turn into a sea of deadly waters. Judges and magistrates are no different from any other humans. They can be wrong. They can be careless. They can make awful decisions that are very bad in law. Why can’t they be criticized?
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