IT is common knowledge now that former Attorney-General, Anil Nandlall has taken great umbrage at the Government seeking to “extend advertisements overseas for the posts of Chancellor and Chief Justice.” Nandlall came to the fore with his attack after Minister of State, Joseph Harmon, announced that the Government will indeed be proceeding with its plan for these posts, and consequently he has raised a number of questions on the matter.
However, it appears as though Nandlall is merely ‘imagining’ or ‘conjuring up’ factors that do not reside in what the Government is thinking.
Nandlall recalls an incident which occurred in early post-Independent Guyana, when the then Government “created the office of the Chancellor of the Judiciary, over and above the office of the Chief Justice, as Head of the Judiciary.” This, he said, was done not only to circumvent but to also humiliate the then sitting Chief Justice, who later resigned and migrated permanently from Guyana.
The Government and the public at large want to know where is the logic in this kind of thinking. It should be remembered that pre-1992 People’s National Congress (PNC) Administrations were presented as most dictatorial and tyrannical by the likes of Anil Nandlall. It means that the then particular Government could have replaced any Chief Justice as Head of the Judiciary, instead of appointing a Chancellor of the Judiciary, “over and above the office of the Chief Justice.”

The Government sees this kind of reasoning as indeed ‘very shallow’ on Nandlall’s part, to draw such an illogical and non-sequitur conclusion; or one can say that he is now debunking his previous position and view that the pre-1992 Governments were not the ‘slaughterers of democracy’ as he and his ilk constantly claimed, when they were in Government.
Secondly, the natural question is why Mr Nandlall should even think that the Government has ulterior motives and a hidden agenda to control, undermine or emasculate the judiciary. Also, how is it that ‘outside bearers of these offices’ will be part of this supposed plan of the Government.

Naturally, one has to contend a ‘wave of emotionalism’ here as being foundational to this kind of spurious analysis. One has to posit some questions here, and hopefully elicit from Mr Nandlall, explanations for his paradoxical contentions: “Do the advertised posts mean that the Government is making itself more transparent and removed from the judiciary; or is this modus operandi clearly saying that it is making itself subject to the Judiciary and restoring it to its place of independence and being bereft of any form of politicisation?”
I do hope for some kind of clarification.

RAMOS DESANTOS