The sale of Lot 142 Durbana Square

February 17, 2014/STABROEK NEWS

The World Justice Project which aims to strengthen the rule of law for the development of communities of opportunity and equity identifies four universal principles to be upheld. These are:

That the government and its officials and agents are accountable under the law;

The laws are clear, publicized, stable, fair, and protect fundamental rights, including the security of persons and property;

The process by which the laws are enacted, administered, and enforced is accessible, fair, and efficient;

Access to justice is provided by competent, independent, and ethical adjudicators, attorneys or representatives, and judicial officers who are of sufficient number, have adequate resources, and reflect the makeup of the communities they serve.

Had these principles been enforced by those in authority, a plot of land in Lamaha Gardens designated as a playground would not have been stealthily sold and denied to the community up to this day.

In a commendable show of civism, residents of the community have banded together in an effort for justice to be served and for the land to be returned to them. While Lamaha Gardens may be but just one community, it is clear that avariciousness for land knows no bounds these days in all spheres of this little society and this injustice is at risk of being replicated elsewhere.

At an emergency meeting on January 22, 2014 of the Lamaha Gardens Community Co-operative Society, Mr Ronald Alli, an executive member of the society,  made a detailed presentation of disturbing facts, occurrences and convenient coincidences that should have led to immediate action by the various responsible government agencies to restore the land to the community.  This was particularly so as several senior government officials had at least tangential connections with the process. Despite this, in its inimitable style, the government while making the right noises and taking some steps has failed to act decisively and appears to have left the citizens of Lamaha Gardens to take their own action to regain the land.

The matter hinges on how land which had always been for community purposes and held by a cooperative could just simply appear on the real estate market and be sold without its custodians being aware of it and at an understated price.

The process of dispossession had its beginnings in July/August of 2012 and led to the surreptitious placing of an advertisement for sale which was bereft of definitive information regarding the cooperative. This led to a series of engagements between a prospective buyer and varied civil servants of the Ministry of Labour. This resulted in a valuation significantly below market value and only for a portion of the land that was eventually sold.

No advertisement or other public notification of the cancellation of the cooperative which possessed the land was made until after more than eighteen months after the purported cancellation.

Further, no effort was made to prove that the membership of the cooperative was below the threshold which would have put its registration at risk of cancellation. These breaches have been substantiated by the fact that the Ministry of Labour has since rescinded the order of cancellation of the co-operative and reinstated it.

Were the matter not so serious it would provide a bankable script for a comedy. The bids were to be submitted to a home on the East Coast thoroughly unsuitable for a public interest tender. The initiator of this aspect of the exercise had no experience in it. Objections to the sale lodged by the Guyana Civil Service Union were ignored.

The property was not valued on the basis of a visit by a valuator neither was the property that was valued the actual property conveyed. One bidder thought that he was tendering for a house lot on the East Coast, another who had tendered later disclaimed any involvement in the process. Before the whole thing blew up, a senior government official, apparently on another course of action, sent a text message decreeing perhaps without an iota of knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the land that the “property is Government property and air marked (sic) for development in the future”.

Another troubling attribute of the process which points in the direction of collusion was the sequence of submission of bids for the property. The first four bids submitted between November 19, 2012 and November 21, 2012 were between $5.4m and $6.5m. Another was submitted on November 22, 2012 for a much higher figure of $28.5m and another a day later for $29m. It so happens that on November 21, one of the latter two bidders was in the presence of two of the civil servants connected with paving the way for the sale of the property. The valuation certificate was also issued on November 22, 2012 for $25.5m. It was further determined by the Lamaha Gardens residents that there was a business relationship between three of the bidders who had collaborated in relation to at least one other property.

Also of interest, the residents have contended, is the unusual speed with which the Deeds Registry processed the transaction. The sale and purchase agreement was signed on December 6, 2012, the instruction to advertise filed on December 10, 2012, the matter was sent to be gazetted on December 12, 2012 and the transaction was published in the Official Gazette of December 22, 2012. On January 3rd, the Ministry of Local Government waived an amount of $3.2m in rates on the property at the request of an officer of the Ministry of Labour though that type of property for community use should have been exempt from rates and taxes. The speed with which the Ministry of local government addressed this matter is interesting considering its recent outcry over applications for the waiving of city rates and taxes for private citizens. Transport was passed on January 7, 2013. The cadastral survey plan at the Deeds Registry should have also raised questions about the change of land use, necessitating consent from the previous custodians.

The police investigation, according to the residents, concluded with the suggestion that conspiracy to commit a felony charges be instituted against three persons. Nothing has happened on this front. Already under severe pressure over corruption it has been the practice of PPP/C administrations to let matters such as this die quietly than risk public outrage and opprobrium over the shenanigans in public offices and potentially touching senior government officials and friends of the ruling party. That seems to be clearly the case here and the residents of the community will have to continue pressing for their rights.

President Ramotar has been approached on this matter by the Lamaha Gardens residents. They await decisive action on his part. However, they should be aware that President Ramotar himself is sitting on the findings of an investigation into corruption at the state television network and adamantly refuses to take any action against persons close to his government and party while offering the most inane excuses unbecoming of the presidency.

In the backdrop of the historic convening here today of the Caribbean Court of Justice, it behoves the President, his government and the Leader of the Bar to re-examine what the rule of law means to an ordered society and why the patent breaches associated with the sale of Lot 142 Durbana Square are so inimical to its tenets.

The role of the citizen as a watchdog, in this case the residents of Lamaha Gardens, might best be summed up in the words of libertarian author Jacob G. Hornberger, “The true patriot scrutinizes the actions of his own government with unceasing vigilance. And when his government violates the morality and rightness associated with principles of individual freedom and private property, he immediately rises in opposition to his government.”