It’s a wild and wacky Guyana…

…in the courts
The phrase “the law is an ass” was coined by Charles Dickens who put it in the mouth of one of his characters: if the workings of the law leads to patently absurd decisions, then “the law is an ass”. The phrase immediately came to your Eyewitness’ mind when he read the snippets of the judgement by the Appellate Court, which affirmed President Granger’s UNILATERAL appointment of the GECOM chair.
Now this appointment is governed by Art 162 (2) of the Constitution which states (very clearly, your Eyewitness thought) that the individual would be “appointed by the President from a list of six persons, not unacceptable to the President” submitted by the Opposition Leader. Now, this procedure worked for the 1992 elections when Rudy Collins was accepted by Desmond Hoyte from the PPP’s list, and then in 1997 when Doodnauth Singh was selected for the 1997 elections from the PNC’s list and again in 2001 when Steve Surujbally took over. David Granger was even on two of the PNC’s list!!
But in approving Granger’s unilateralism, one Judge, for instance, threw all of that out of the window!! It’s not just required that the Opposition Leader submit a “list of six”…no siree Bob!…there must now be consultations between him and the President!! “The submission of a list, never mind 18 names and three lists, but without the engagement on their acceptability, separate from the choice, could not have led to a consensual candidate”!! Why? She pronounced that “the manner in which the lists were submitted was not reasonable”!!!
Imagine that!! Consensus was reached three times from submission of lists by the Opposition Leader, but suddenly there has to be “engagement”? Well, there has been “engagement” on the appointment of the Chancellor and Chief Justice between the President and the Opposition Leader, but no consensus. What now? It’s OK for the President to unilaterally appoint his choices? Well, for what it’s worth, your Eyewitness thinks this is exactly what Granger will now be doing – because the law has been shown to be an ass!!
The present Acting Chancellor’s decision was also inexplicable. Rejecting the President’s expressed position that all six of the OL’s nominees should be “acceptable”, she however said that if more than half of the names are acceptable by the “reasonable man’s test” then the President should pick from the list. Well, shouldn’t this be the “reasonable President” would have acted under the circumstances?
And if all three Presidents before Granger picked FROM the names on the OL’s list isn’t that the reasonable thing to do?
But then such reasoning assumed the law isn’t an ass, doesn’t it?

…with procurement corruption
October’s supposed to be “Agriculture Month”, but with the Auditor General’s Report released in this month, over the last three years, it’s become “Corruption Month”!! For a Government that rode into power promising a “clean” Government after accusing its predecessor, the PPP regime, of “siphoning off billions and billions”, the PNC is certainly sticking its hands into the cookie jar! And being caught!! Shameless!!
This year’s AG Report is so chock-full of scandals, your Eyewitness just doesn’t know where to begin!! The contractor for the Port Kaituma Doctors’ quarters who received $45 million (72 per cent) of the contract price since 2016 but has only done 28 per cent of the work? So what if the doctors are sleeping in hammocks under trees!! No accounting for the $550 million given to HDI – the “private company” with Roopnaraine – for D’Urban Park? The $112 million in advance payments for works never done in Region 10??
We could go on and on…but what’s the point?? How long has the D’Urban Park boondoggle been in the public? What about the $600 million Ansa Pharma scam?
Corruption is power; and absolution is now absolute power!!

…showing mercy to the Attorney General
Is it possible the Appellate Court’s GECOM chair’s decision was to save Basil Williams who’d lost eight cases in a row?
Naah! The court threw out his arguments and made up their own!!