Here is more proof that Guyana is a wasteland
This is what I wrote in my column of Friday, April 13, “On Wednesday afternoon, my Thursday column was already in at Kaieteur News when I got a call from Mr. Lall. He said the governor (Bank of Guyana) contacted the CEO of Republic Bank on the envelope controversy and the CEO told him Republic Bank no longer insists on the presentation of an envelope as proof of address”.
I got that call on April 11. April 20, is one week after. Yet on April 20, retired assistant commissioner of police, Clinton Conway, was asked for the envelope of a letter he received from the acting Commissioner of Police, a letter which he supplied as proof of address. His complaint is contained in a published missive in this newspaper of April 23.
The Governor of the Bank of Guyana is one of the main actors in the nerve system of Guyana’s financial physiology. The CEO of Republic Bank runs a financial institution that, by virtue of capital, is the leading private bank in Guyana. These are two important officials in any country and they are so in Guyana.
Which one is telling the truth? But there is a more important question. How can a country stand silent on this kind of behaviour from one of its most important officials? The fact is as day follows night, Conway’s letter will pass into oblivion; there will be another complaint published by the newspapers, and the country’s population will be treated with contempt, in that, neither Central Bank nor Republic Bank will respond, and life will simply go on.
What kind of country is this? How did such a nation come to have such a shambolic life? Why will there not be a press statement from these two institutions? Because this is Guyana, where the nature of its negative existence is well known. It is the same all over this country. Why did Magistrate Sunil Scarce jail a convicted traffic offender for an offence which does not carry a prison term? If you think the magistrate is a silly fellow who is pompous, you are wrong.
He is not pompous or silly. He knows Guyana, and he knows there will be no discussion of, much less repercussion from his action, so he takes the plunge. I am sure Magistrate Scarce knows that the Government (not an NDC, not an NGO, not a private citizen) of Guyana issued a condemnatory statement when Magistrate McLennan fined a woman for trafficking in persons when the law mandates an automatic jail term.
Absolutely nothing came out of that reaction by the state of Guyana. Magistrate McLennan is still the chief magistrate. Life goes on in Guyana. I told Adam Harris on Monday, after what Scarce did was carried in the Kaieteur News that I know of several such transgressions by other magistrates, and the victims were not given publicity – the kind Mr. Green got from the Kaieteur News. Adam’s reaction was plausible, so I didn’t rebut. He said people have to come and complain. Mr. Green did and the newspaper investigated. He is right. Not every week but almost every day I get telephone calls from people about what the magistracy, the High Court, the police, business bosses, the Georgetown Hospital, regional hospitals, the private schools, state-owned school administrators, the Georgetown City Council, government ministries etc., do to them.
On every occasion I would suggest that they go to the press because my column cannot accommodate them. Mr. Green was courageous, and through his bravery we got to know what Magistrate Scarce did. Some of these stories are descriptions of a land that time and space forgot, and that land is Guyana.
I keep emphasizing; if there is anything this country needs it is a no-nonsense state-funded human rights body that has legal power to intervene and distribute justice for victims that have been horribly mistreated. I see these situations so often that I wonder if a day will ever come when the less financially endowed will get justice.
I will leave you with just a few samples of what takes place daily in our country. At UG, the police were called in to investigate a situation. The police cleared the four persons who were asked to go on leave, but they were still removed. A man was clearing his land at Providence. The fire scorched a neighbour’s fence. He agreed to have his carpenter replace the wood that was burnt. The neighbour demanded a huge sum instead. The man refused. The police locked him up for criminal damage. This is just a tiny speck of the tip of the iceberg.
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