Dear Editor,

I READ the letters by both highly respected citizens Mr. Hinds and Mr. Christopher Ram, and while I agree with the fundamental thrust of what they are saying vis-a-vis the establishment of a functional human rights environment, I find their specific argument in defence of NICIL’s Mr. Winston Brassington and Mr. Khurshid Sattaur contextually flawed, particularly in the direction in which both arguments seem to be heading.

Mr. Hinds argues that Brassington’s actions were in sum good for the country, and hence he should not be ‘pilloried’ for minor excesses, while Mr. Ram argues that Sattaur’s sole and ultimately forgivable blunder was the revelation of confidential taxpayer information to Bharrat Jagdeo, and hence apparent current investigations against him appear arbitrary.

While I agree completely that any action taken against an officer of the former administration has to be done within the confines of the law, and that a court of justice is the better arena for tangible action than the court of public opinion, both writers seem wanting to make a case that both Brassington and Sattaur are above censure or investigative action.

In the case of Mr. Ram, while he is correct that the case of professional misconduct was withdrawn against Mr. Sattaur in regard to the revelation of information, he incorrectly conflates this with the presumption of a carte blanche for the long-standing head of presumably one of the most corrupt state agencies in presumably the most corrupt country in the Caribbean -– an agency that presumably was used as a weapon against opponents of the former government. Mr. Ram is a lawyer, and while he makes an ostensibly ethical case against the seizure of Mr. Sattaur’s computer and firearm from his home, he has not even attempted to argue that the actions taken by junior officers, presumably under the direction of the GRA Board, were in any way ultra vires.

For his part, after an extremely elegant argument on the need for national reconciliation, Mr. Hinds says, in defence of Brassington’s NICIL, “On the broad margins, we can scrutinize projects and privatizations that together number over two hundred and find imperfections, including preferential treatment and measures that go against the grain of good governance; however, the development of a country does not occur in a pristine vacuum.”

This is flawed logic at best. The development of a country best occurs when the sort of preferential treatment — the Sanata deal, for example, that prevailed under the PPP — is mitigated and kept to a minimum, not rationalized and glossed over.

The reality is that preferential treatment not only artificially amplifies the capacity of the favoured, but dwarfs the capacity of potential, often better qualified, competitors. Not only did the PPP apply preferential treatment at the large project level, but it completely undermined the public service with ‘preferential treatment’ in the form of unapologetic racism and nepotism.

Further, the preferential treatment in the granting of media licences to only people the PPP found favourable, and to the PPP itself, was a direct attack on the fundamental right of freedom of expression. I know of no functional best practice system, however liberal, in which this is a model of sustainable development.

There are many contractors, service providers, public servants and private citizens who would disagree with Mr. Hinds’s view of development. The PPP’s viciously discriminatory practices have in fact hurt every single sector, from road construction to education to cultural development. Even more so, those practices have taken on the lives of individuals an immeasurable toll that can never be repaid.

If there is danger in the overzealous prosecution and pillory of persons like Sattaur and Brassington, there is a far greater danger in failing to bring to justice those culpable for excesses under the previous regime. In doing so, victims of the system are denied justice. What we would be saying, in essence, is that class and power associations are predominant factors in determining the application of the rule of law and the dispensation of justice, even as those class and power associations have been forged by the despicable foundry of ethnic politics.

Under the former administration, I wrote about the necrotic silence that was slowly creeping over this place. Now that it has been checked, we find ourselves engaged in certain quarters in a compromised conversation that continues to be dangerously skewed towards complete absolution of crimes in which victims were robbed of the very rights of citizenship and humanity under the PPP.

In general terms, the representation that speaks of clemency and fundamental rights, currently being made for the formerly powerful, cannot be absent direct representation for the voiceless that they were instrumental in suppressing.

It is well and good that we show that we are capable of clemency; but first we must tangibly demonstrate that we are capable of the delivery of justice. At this point, more than half a year into the Coalition’s electoral win, we have not.

There are two simple solutions available to the Executive in this dilemma – the first is to let due process and the rule of law prevail without fear or favour; and if deals are to be made, their outcome must be tangible gains in the public interest. The second is to recognize that while the law may be inadequate for the delivery of justice to many people, those who risked and sacrificed for a change in Guyana’s political leadership deserve to have their conviction vindicated in other ways, even if just to be able to voice the injustice meted out to them, or have it represented with the same eloquence with which Brassington and Sattaur now find themselves being represented.

Yours faithfully,
RUEL JOHNSON