…and “emergency” jailing
Your Eyewitness has always insisted if we mess around with the “rule of law”, we’re just dooming ourselves to another fifty years of languishing near Haiti among the basket cases of the world. The “rule of law” is very simple – and was summarized rather pithily by the old folks: what’s sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander.
And applied to the running of our country, if a law applies to one, it should apply to all, including those at the very top of the ladder. Your Eyewitness was forced into this line of thought by the continued obstreperousness of Finance Minister Winston Jordan in relation to his wanton and reckless spending from the Contingencies Fund. The man is so filled with hubris he’s just daring the gods to bring him to heel. He insists he’s the SOLE arbiter of what qualifies as an “emergency” for him to spend from the Contingencies Fund.
Well among other things like hurling lightning bolts from the skies, nowadays the gods work through the laws of the land. And in this case Jordan’s just plain wrong legally on the discretion allowed to a Minister or any member of the Executive. Maybe he should consult his learned colleague Khemraj Ramjattan, the Minister of Public Security, who also just happens to be a lawyer. And who threatened to bring a suit in the courts to throw Jordan’s predecessor, Ashni Singh, in jail for allegedly committing the same act for which Jordan stands accused by the Auditor General.
As one eminent Guyanese jurist – Luckhoo – said in a landmark case, the Minister’s discretion is “not unfettered”. And under the Rule of Law, the courts are the arbiter of what those “fetters” are being that the doctrine of “Judicial Review” is now trite law. And thank god that’s so, or else those whom WE have placed in government could “do what they want wid we!” Here Jordan’s raiding the Contingencies Fun because of “emergencies” as he defined them.
Some citizen should just file a case in the High Court against Jordan for misspending his hard owned tax money – which the government deducts even before he can see what his sweat earned. And Ramjattan should remind Jordan that once the case is before the Judiciary, British, Commonwealth and our precedence give Judges a huge leeway under the doctrine of “natural justice”, to haul his ass off to jail.
Imagine having the gall to pay Larry Singh $65 MILLION in March for a bottom-house bond that couldn’t be used till September.
Emergency?? Well they did say they needed it in case of fire at the Diamond warehouse!!
…on generating electricity
When will this confounded nonsense stop?? This barefaced rape of the public treasury to reward fat cats who funded the AFC’s and APNU’s campaign, that is. The latest outrage is the announcement that the Wind Farm project to generate electricity has been given the go ahead to sell its electricity to GPL. Now we ordinary citizens would think… what could possibly be wrong about generating electricity from wind? It’s good and green, right?
Well, that depends. And when the operator’s Lloyd Singh – who Raphael Trotman’s of the AFC publicly acknowledged was the businessman who made an “investment” in the AFC’s headquarters – we need to look closer at the fine print of the power purchase agreement with GPL. And this is where we can see the “cock”. The wind farm’s gonna be a “mixed” facility – meaning Lloyd Singh will also have generators that’ll use oil – purportedly to even out his supply.
But with our Trade Winds breaking into equal period of lulls as spurts, GPL will be buying mostly fossil fuel generate power.
So with no “green”, why all the concessions??
…disrespectful Audit to City Hall
The stench you’re smelling is the breaking of wind from the utterance by the Mayor that the Audit of City Hall by the AG for over $300 million in subventions is “disrespectful”!!
