By GHK Lall- I think that Chancellor of the Judiciary (ag), Excellency Yonette Cummings-Edwards would make a superb diplomat. I am nominating her for the next senior ambassadorial posting, preferably to the USA or UK. Even if she tried, she couldn’t do worse. Better yet, the Irfaan Ali Government gets to take care of three birds with one pebble. It is a testimony to my confidence in the superior standards of His Excellency’s unchallenged and unfettered leadership that I added another winged creature to that proverb, and reduced a stone to a pebble. He deals with a thorny judiciary matter (at least one half of it), improve the quality of his diplomatic corps, and succeeds at the impossible: he pleases everybody. Except some party hack recalled from his cushy overseas posting.
For there was Justice Cummings-Edwards on the occasion of International Women’s Day Judges in splendid form. ‘We have arrived, but we have a long way to go.’ No question that women have made some strides, let that be said. But no sooner had they arrived and made some headway in cracking the glass ceiling than they found themselves with an immovable red brick wall in front of them in Guyana.
The colour alone should emphasise the national disgrace that has visited Justice Cummings-Edwards and her next-door colleague. Some arrival, it has been for the two of them. Indeed, it has been a long time since that acting attachment has been associated with their respective job titles.
But Justice Cummings-Edwards is too classy a figure (a stoic one too) to even hint at her own circumstances. But there it was, the 1000-lb elephant hanging by a thread from the chandeliers. I took the liberty of increasing the animal’s weight, and changing rafters to chandeliers. Things are that delicately poised that even the CCJ had occasion to speak on the embarrassment meted out to these two fine women for so many moons. Blue would be understating the interval involved.
It has been so long that in the last Golden Globe and Academy awards, I looked for the names Cummings-Edwards and George-Wiltshire for lifetime awards in acting, but came up emptyhanded. President Ali should have gotten honorable mention for the wonderful acting performances that he has put in on this daunting picture, but the judges nixed the idea at the last minute. Unworthy. It is not the first time that I put my money on a losing one-trick nag.
Not to be deterred, Justice Cummings-Edwards was skilled enough to haul Article 29 of the Guyana Constitution into the limelight. It pertains to equal rights, and to which she smartly affixed working more diligently for laws that afford possibly “greater freedoms for women.” Well, said, Your Honor. Equal rights and “greater freedoms” for women met the call of the moment. But those also can be applied to her own situation as she toils away in the barren and hostile sandpits of Guyana’s judiciary.
The relevance, the application, is uncanny. Of what value are equal rights for women, when a woman, make that two of them, are suspended overhead as though they are some national billboard put out for titillating display? It should now be clear regarding why I had to say that Excellency Ali did so poorly in that one acting role that got him five thumbs down from the award judges.
If anything, Justice Cummings-Edwards demonstrated that she knows how to layer her points, deliver her positions, in a coherent, convincing manner. She referred to the Charter of Civil Society signed by CARICOM heads back in 1997 that has as one of its elements, ongoing commitments to gender equality. Dr. Cheddi Jagan would have been around then, and at the helm. Look at where his better half ended up when he took leave of this earthly paradise called Guyana. Clearly, he made good on that charter.
Yet here we are 28 years later, and there is acting Chancellor of the Judiciary Cummings-Edwards and Chief Justice (ag), Roxane George-Wiltshire. My god, my god, why have thou forsaken me? Or, should it be more appropriate to assert: different folks, different strokes? There does seem to be more than the untoward involved in two senior jurists being forced to walk the public gangplank for so long.
And two women at that, believe it or not, in this day and age. I can’t help but to wonder what the US ambassador and the British High Commissioner think of this ugly political assault on two members of their own gender. The case could be made that what has been endured for so long by the acting chancellor and acting chief justice is another form of domestic abuse, but this time in public, and all the way from the top. Now, If I were the president, I would consider taking one of those ocean cruises. He knows what he has to do, once the deepest part is reached. In the cases of Justices Cummings-Edwards and George-Wiltshire, keep on smiling, maintain dignified bearing.
