– on court rulings on the NCM

Dear Editor,
ON reading Monday’s editorial in Stabroek News, titled “Unconstitutional gov’t and cash transfers”, I was reminded of a remark Desmond Hoyte once made at a party exec. meeting. In reply to a persistent suggestion that the party needed to aggressively respond to yet another attack of it in the newspapers, he said, with an amused chuckle, “It is hard to out-paper these people!”

Indeed, it appears hard to “out-paper” the Stabroek News on the rulings of the Caribbean Court of Justice and our Chief Justice.  The newspaper, in gasping for oxygen for its tattered campaign of misinformation, strikingly avoids in the editorial any mention of the rulings of the courts, the final arbiters of the Constitution. Instead, the newspaper now pins its claim that the government is unconstitutional on the press releases of the Bar Council of the Guyana Bar Association, the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Commonwealth.

Stabroek News is obviously running out of railway. This last-ditch effort at public deception comes as its previous attempt to put its own spin on the Constitution crash-landed into the CJ’s ruling last Wednesday that  the opposition’s application for an order for the Cabinet, including the President, to resign was “wholly misconceived”, “vexatious” and “an absolute abuse of the court”. With the courts offering no help in its campaign to out-paper the truth, the newspaper now seeks rescue in the political announcements of the bar association and the diplomatic community. Maybe to show respect for the courts of the land, these very offices should now retract their earlier positions, now that they know better.

In a letter in SN, published the same day as its editorial, I wrote that for anyone to persist with this campaign of deception would now be beyond disrespect of the courts and the public. In this regard, Monday’s editorial in SN is shameful.

Regards,
Sherwood Lowe