ON March 25, Stabroek News (SN) published an editorial captioned, ‘The Court of Appeal ruling and its aftermath’.
The ill-advised publication is not only an embarrassment to SN, but also brings the entire practice of journalism into disrepute, as the article not only presents several questionable assertions as facts, but also directly attacks the institution of the judiciary, which is a major cornerstone of democracy and good governance.

The SN article attacks the ruling itself. It states, “The majority decision of the court on Friday came as a surprise. The ruling that 34 is the requisite majority in the National Assembly, for the purposes of the NCM, is utterly unconvincing. If the formula of the two justices was adopted, and consideration taken of the high importance of this case, then the majority on the three-person panel would be three – truly astounding.

It remains the case that those who have argued for 34 as a majority have inserted the word ‘absolute’ into their pleadings, where this term is not present in the article in question, and is hardly implied in the rest of the Constitution. On those grounds alone, the case for 34 should fail, as Article 106 (6) is pellucid on its very own, and should not be adulterated by the language of expediency.”

It states too, “It will not go unnoticed to the CCJ that a separate branch of government – the legislature — ruled that the NCM was properly passed.” Further, the article asserts that, “The layman should also be forgiven for believing that the principle of stare decisis should be applicable in this case.”

Stabroek News then goes even further down the road of speculation and unfounded prediction by asserting that many of the proponents of the egregious 34 argument had fully accepted that 33 was the trigger for the fall of a government under Article 106(6). In this vein, the SN names Prime Minister Nagamootoo, Minister Hughes, Attorney-General Williams, and even President David Granger, among others. SN predicts how the government will behave in the wake of the ruling, and implies improper collusion between government and GECOM by stating, “With the Court of Appeal’s ruling, the merry go-around between government and the Guyana Elections Commission will come to a halt. There is no imperative at this point to declare a date for general elections.”
SN ends by suggesting that government engage the opposition in discussions as the case goes to the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).

First, the existence and publication of the content of the editorial is improper and unethical, and one would have expected a higher level of conduct from one of Guyana’s most established newspapers. SN’s attacks on the court, the judicial system, the government and its officials, the ruling and the entire process of jurisprudence are to be condemned.

According to the Reynold’s Journalism Institute of the University of Missouri, “The fundamental objective of journalism is to serve the people with news, views, comments and information on matters of public interest in a fair, accurate unbiased, sober and decent manner. Towards this end, the Press is expected to conduct itself in keeping with certain norms of professionalism.” Such norms include accuracy and fairness, pre-publication verification, caution against defamatory or libelous writings.

Under no circumstances can the SN article be deemed to be accurate or fair; the article is clearly biased, unfair, prejudicial and disrespectful of elected officials of government and the institution of the court. One may even conclude that it borders on the inflammatory. SN’s attack on the ruling of the Court of Appeal goes beyond the distasteful, and enters the realm of the surreal, as it appears that the newspaper has placed itself above the court, and holds the view that its judgement and knowledge of legal matters superceed that of Guyana’s second highest court.

Further, SN purports to interpret the constitution, strongly implying that the justices of the court either do not know their job, or are hypocritical in their actions. The disrespect displayed by SN does not end there. The paper presumes to know how the government, including the president, will conduct itself. This, in spite of no mention being made of pre-publication interviews being conducted with any of the persons named in the article.

SN wrote, “the layman should also be forgiven for believing that the principle of stare decisis should be applicable in this case.” For purposes of clarification, “Stare decisive” simply means precedent, aword which SN could have used, instead of trying to impress readers. By the way, precedent, it is said by lawyers, applies in almost every case in which similar facts are at issue.

Considering all of the foregoing, SN owes an apology not only to the institutions and persons that were so blatantly disrespected by the content of the article, but also to the reading public, whose intelligence was insulted by its insinuations that the newspaper was in a better position to determine a matter of constitutional law rather than Guyana’s Court of Appeal.