Eyewitness: What’s law got to do…with lawbreakers?

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Guyana’s a funny place to live. Not “ha ha” funny, but just plain weird if you try to make sense of what’s going on. Take, for instance, that nasty episode which took place in our bastion of democracy – the National Assembly. There, the folks whom we chose to represent our interests – according to the rules we’ve ALL agreed to follow – were forced by PNC MPs into a brawl more suitable for the rum shop at the street corner! If this is how the PNCs gonna behave, shouldn’t we revert to the clubs the cave men use to wield?? Guyana’s a funny place!

But that’s only the half of it. After again turning us into a laughing stock in the democratic world in general – and our Caricom neighbours in particular – the PNC’s now talking about taking the PPP Govt to court over the fracas!! That’s right! A PNC MP – once a GDF officer – seized the symbol of authority from the Speaker’s desk and her party’s now demanding that the NRF Bill that was subsequently passed isn’t legal – SINCE THERE WAS NO MACE?!!

So, the PNC breaks the law and wants to benefit from that breach? Wasn’t there something that plaintiffs must approach the Courts with clean hands?? Guyana’s a funny place!
Another incident that caught your Eyewitness’s attention was PNC executive (?) James Bond partnering with a businessman to distribute 500 hampers and 1000 toys to a community on the East Coast. Now, obviously, the PNC fella would be operating in his stomping grounds, no? But you ought to hear the outcry from the WOKE members of the Opposition!! How dare this businessman – whom Bond had previously identified as being a contributor to the PNC coffers – distribute hampers in an African-Guyanese community!! Never mind that Guyanese businessmen in general have been routinely accused of not caring for the poor – especially poor folks who traditionally support the PNC!

So, what’s poor Bond or the businessmen to do? Ignore identified needs in communities on the ground that the PNC wants to claim it has a transport over them? But what’s interesting is that, somehow, it’s being accepted that Bond isn’t “PNC” any longer? When was he expelled? So, the only answer is that the WOKE PNCites are assuming that the Businessman is PPP!!! Or worse yet…an Indian-Guyanese.

But BK’s an Indian Businessman and he was quite handsomely rewarded by the PNC, wasn’t he? If the PNC wants to do its own distribution of hampers, why didn’t its members pick a businessman like BK to do the honours?? Seems to your Eyewitness that the PNC wants to have its hampers and share them too!!
Guyana’s a funny place!!

…with PNC grabbing power?

But when you really think about it, the PNC always had a weird conception of what’s the law? Which is quite (funny?) Since its founder Burnham was a lawyer who gathered some of the most brilliant lawyers in the land around him. Talk about legends like Ramphal, Shahabbudeen, Wills and Luckhoo! He was then succeeded by another lawyer, Hoyte. But then, old people say, “too much familiarity breeds contempt”, and maybe that’s why the PNC’s been willing to play so fast and loose with the law.

So, the PNC – which ruled from 2015 to 2020 on a majoritarian principle that states if you have more than half of the votes in Parliament you can pass laws, after debate – suddenly decides this isn’t “kosher”!! But why didn’t it say so when it got into power?? But (funny enough) it DID!! In its 2015 Manifesto it said it’d include the PPP in the Government even if it got a majority.
But never did. Funny, ain’t it?

…Justice?

There’s this old tradition in law that says we can’t just go by the LETTER of the law. There’s gotta be something BEHIND the words that presupposes what we KNOW to be “Just”: Fairness.
And it ain’t fair that Judges can’t be critiqued.

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