ON Tuesday, June 26, the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) ruled by 6-1 in favour of residential term limits in Guyana. This ruling was welcomed by all and sundry across the political divide in Guyana, but are we going to ignore the Orwellian and Dickensian intrigue that surrounded this case? Those who believe that this was not a Caesarean plot should go to the back of the class and wear the political dunce cap and stand on the bench.

During my high school days, my favourite class was English Literature, taught by Miss Blake. My favourite book was ‘Julius Caesar’; I fell in love with this book ever since my first encounter. In 1599, William Shakespeare, inspired by the events in Roman history, produced yet another political masterpiece in the form of ‘Julius Caesar’. In Act 1, Scene 2, there is the following discourse:

Brutus: ‘What was the second noise for?’
Casca: ‘Why, for that too.
Cassius: ‘They shouted thrice. What was the last cry for?’
Casca: ‘Was for that too’
Brutus: ‘Was the Crown offered thrice?’
Casca: ‘Ah,marry was’t, and he put it by thrice, every time, gentler than the other, and at every putting-by mine honest neighbours shouted’.

This part of the beautiful Shakespearean drama makes for excellent application to the third-term drama that caught the attention of this nation; it was indeed a Caesarean plot. Caesar schemed to be Emperor of Rome while publicly rejecting an interest in same. In 2001, the Guyana Parliament, with a two-third majority, altered Article 90 of the 1980 constitution to establish the term limit of a President.

This was signed into law by then President Bharrat Jagdeo, the only living President this law could affect directly. The nation breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that this was a new era where unchecked, insatiable appetites for power will be forever corralled by this amendment. What great intrigue and Caesarean plotting met the nation when suddenly a petition by Mr. Cedric Richardson to the courts requesting the decision by the Guyana Parliament to be struck down.

This Orwellian chicanery became clear when Mr. Richardson was contacted and denied that he was behind this case from his modest home which is not consistent with the astronomical costs that surrounded this case. To date, Mr. Richardson has not been identified. The name on the case docket remains a phantom. So the streets, halls of power, civil society and more began to ask, who was behind this grand
Machiavellian scheme?

All fingers began to point at the former President, Bharrat Jagdeo, who on February 4th 2015, through a statement by the Cabinet Secretary Dr. Roger Luncheon, made known that he had zero interest in a third term. Was this a case of Caesar refusing the crown? It seemed eerily similar to a Shakespearean drama.

The nation was transfixed, I was perplexed. Mr. Richardson was victorious in the High Court and the Court of Appeal, but the move to the CCJ commenced another chapter in this political charade. Most thought that this case would collapse in terms of the plaintiff’s representation at the CCJ, due to the financial implications.

Most cases before the CCJ out of Guyana have been executed by large corporations. I am advised that a retainer fee for Queen’s Counsel representation is around US$100,000 with additional costs attached. The total cost of this case for the plaintiff is estimated, conservatively, at USD$ 400,000.

It begs the obvious question, which Guyanese citizen of average means forks out GY 80,000,000 million in the interest of personal democracy and does not even appear publicly to embrace his cause? It is evident, the land of the mighty Roraima was hit by a Caesarean plot reminiscent of the same mysterious, opaque political machinations that engulfed the nation during the reign of the cabal.

The implications are frightening to say the least. The CCJ delivered nation-saving justice.
Term limits will open the floodgates of ambitions for leadership on one side of the political divide, while this is great for Guyanese democracy, Caesar stills stands and I am reminded again of the words of Shakespeare/Caesar, ‘Let me have men about me that are fat, sleek-headed men and such as sleep o-nights. Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look’.