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Dear Editor,
Justice Sir Udo Udoma was a prominent Nigerian jurist of unprecedented quality. In 1938, sensing his level of brilliance, the elders of his minority Ibibo tribe of South East Nigeria pooled resources and sent him on a scholarship to study in the UK. By 1945, he had earned his Ph.D. in law from the University of Oxford. He was subsequently appointed a judge of the High Court of Uganda and in 1963, just after that country’s independence, he was appointed the first black Chief Justice. Justice Udo Udoma made quite a number of landmark decisions and continues to be “celebrated for his diligent and irreproachable dispensation of justice in Uganda.” Editor, a story is told of how Justice Udoma dismissed a libel case where the plaintiff had sued for libel over a statement that was uttered by clergy in church. In dismissing the matter, the judge reasoned that the utterances of the clergy, while they might be perceived to be slanderous, in no way affected the social or economic standing of the plaintiff. I cannot summarise the entire ruling here because of space but this is a case I would recommend lawyers and judges to read.
Editor, in the course of last week, Senior Counsel, Ralph Ramkarran decried that Guyana’s criminal justice system was on the verge of collapse. Personally, I do not think that any intellectually sound person needed such statements from the elderly SC to know that the entire justice system is decadent and indeed on the verge of collapse. When it comes to the delivery of justice, we are in the Orwellian Animal Farm where ‘all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.’ In this land of many waters, the law is indeed an ass. Its application is often contrary to commonsense. For the rich and the politicians, it is an ass on which they ride to tread on the poor and the vulnerable. The result of this has been the birth of a society where wrong is right and right is wrong. Let us first put aside the sloth in the delivery of justice but let us consider some of the decisions emanating from the court and one would be able to see wherein lies our judicial problem.
Of recent, the judges have been awarding huge sums of money in libel matters. In fact, suing for libel is quickly becoming one of the most profitable businesses in Guyana. My only concern, Editor, is that the criteria which these judges use to arrive at these huge sums remain quite unclear and unknown. You find in one case a judge is awarding GYD$ 3 million and in another identical case, same plaintiff and defendant, the judge awarded the sums of G$ 10 million. How is this possible? Editor, the word on the streets is that this is a cowboy country where politically aligned judges are awarding large sums in damages in these libel cases for three reasons: one to silence or if possible, even bankrupt the critics of their political parties. Another reason is that there is a well-planned machinery to silence any independent media from conducting investigative journalism. Kaieteur news, from these frivolous libel cases, is likely to pay in excess of G$ 40 million. Yes, G$ 40 million. Thirdly, it is alleged that some judges are conniving to award large sums of money and in turn, get a ‘cutback.’
Editor, what I find also to be strange with these cases is this. If someone libels someone using similar or identical statements on different occasions, why can’t a judge consolidate all those cases into one and deliver a single judgment? Why should a judge offer different decisions and awards for identical cases, leave alone the fact that they could have occurred on different dates? For example, if someone said person A was a thief on Monday and on Tuesday that same individual called Person A a thief of oranges and on Friday, a thief of big oranges, why should a fair-minded judge really award different damages for those identical utterances?
When one puts into consideration the remarks of one of the bosses of Hess as reported in the local media that the president assured him that the judge was going to grant a stay in the full liability case and so said so done, it becomes a serious cause for concern for many of us without political connections and money. Editor, I also saw on social media that the high-ranking official who was accused of allegedly raping and sodomising the underage girl allegedly boasted that in any worst-case scenario, he would only lose his job but would go to no jail. This was online even before the matter was dismissed by the DPP.
What is of more concern is this: a friend of mine told me that in 2020, during the height of the electoral controversy, Western diplomats had a meeting apparently with one official of the former Government and that in that meeting, one of the envoys told the official that the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) was going to rule against them so why cling on to power after all? This was even before the lower court had delivered their verdict. Because there was a lot of misinformation during that period, I did not take such a statement seriously. If this is true, it would imply that the judicial system is rotten from the bottom up.
Editor, just as an effective, fair, and balanced media and opposition are important in any functional democracy, so should the judiciary. A judicial system that is perceived by masses to be politicised and exists only to serve the interests of the elites, can be a precursor for social breakdown. In the case of Guyana, some of the hefty awards being awarded by some judges to the libel plaintiffs should be a serious cause for concern and must be investigated. These awards essentially are empowering officials to do whatever they can with our resources after all, should anyone, including the media speak out, we can run to the courts of law and sue for libel. Clearly, there is a crisis of confidence in the judicial system from the lower courts to the apex court. Personally, I believe that once the welfare of the justices is questionable, you open them to influences.
Yours truly,
Joseph Wangija
