The following letter was sent to the Guyana Times newspaper by Attorney General Basil Williams:THE Guyana Times front page headline and photograph dated July 25, 2015, which screamed, “Law students AG clash over “uncertain’ Hugh Wooding agreement”, with the accompanying photograph captioned, “A law student making a point during Friday’s forum with Attorney General Basil Williams at the Arthur Chung Convention Centre, Liliendaal, Greater Georgetown” is erroneous. Firstly your reporter failed to employ the first basic tenet of newswriting that is, checking the facts.
Had your reporter followed this basic journalist tenet, the facts would reveal that the lady in photograph is not a “law student” but an Attorney at Law from the Attorney General Chambers and the question she raised was totally unrelated to the Hugh Wooding Agreement but was focused on the accreditation of the new law programmes being launched by the University of Guyana (UG). A fact check would have also revealed the Attorney General (AG) and Minister of Legal Affairs Basil Williams experiential involvement in resolving the Hugh Wooding Law students’ issue was inherited from the PPP/C Government.
On assumption to the AG’s office, Minister Williams did not find a file that spoke to an updated position on the issue of the automatic entry of the 25 law students to the Hugh Wooding Law School (HWLS) in Trinidad & Tobago. The Minister had to write to the Council of Legal Education (CLE) for an update, in response the Council noted that there was an agreement in 2013 to automatically take the 25 law students which ended in 2014. In addition the CLE pointed to the ongoing negotiation in relation to the collaborative agreement among University of the West Indies (UWI), UG and the CLE, and suggested that a new proposal by the University of Guyana was stalling any consensus.
Within a month, in the AG Chambers, Minister Williams met with the current batch of HWLS students and heard firsthand the issues affecting them in the pursuance of their Legal Education Certificate (LEC) at the Hugh Wooding School; held meetings with the Guyana Bar Association, Vice Chancellor of the University of Guyana, Jacob Opadeyi; Head of the Department of Law, Sheldon McDonald; President of the Bar Association; Christopher Ram; past president of the Bar Association, Ronald Birch-Smith; a member of the Council of Legal Education; and Vincent Alexander, Technical Advisor to the senior Minister of Education and former UG Registrar.
Following those meetings, the AG took the decision to contact the Guyanese delegation at the CARICOM Heads of Government Conference in Barbados to seek an amendment to the agenda to include the issue of the automatic entry of the law students to the HWLS for 2015. Williams further requested that Foreign Minister Carl Greenidge seek an agreement with the CARICOM Heads to continue the interim arrangements made at their Intercessional Meeting in 2013. The interim arrangement was to allow the automatic entry of the top 25 UG law graduates to the HWLS for 2014, pending the conclusion of another Collaborative Agreement between UG, UWI and the CLE. Based on Williams’s intervention, CARICOM Heads at the Conference took a unanimous decision to call on the HWLS to make the required provisions for the automatic entry of the top 25 law students from UG for the academic year 2015/2016.
Editor, it is significant that after 23 years of the PPP/C Government’s failure to find a permanent solution to the Guyanese law students pursuing their Legal Education Certificate (LEC) at the Hugh Wooding School, the Attorney General has not only managed to gain an immediate short term solution, but recognises the need for a permanent solution to this sore problem. Hence the Minister is in the process of consulting with all the relevant stakeholders in pursuit of a permanent resolution, that of exploring options for the establishment of Guyana’s own law school.
Editor, I do hope that you give this letter equal prominence as you have your erroneous front page report.
Namela Henry/Rowe
PRO/Personal Assistant
Attorney General