Before the CCJ even opens its file – as just promised – on July 29, your Eyewitness can hear the collective sigh from you, dear readers, and the wider public, who’ve followed Sanction Man’s OFAC-requested extradition saga for gold smuggling and other sundry related crimes!! Not because the legal issues are unimportant – they are – but because every mile of the judicial road seems to produce another roundabout!!
This time Sanction Man’s legal touts challenged the Minister of Home Affairs’ authority to proceed (ATP) with the US extradition request. Why?? The Minister was biased!! Can you believe this?? Well, the Magistrate, High and Appeals Courts didn’t – so we’ll hear what the CCJ’s gonna say!! If the argument is accepted in the broadest sense, perhaps every extradition request should now come with a certificate confirming that the Minister has never formed an opinion, read a newspaper, watched television, or heard a rumour about the person involved??
Your Eyewitness almost expects Sanction Man’s next submission to be that the official stationery was folded at the wrong angle, rendering the entire process constitutionally suspect!! Not on all fours!! Now don’t get your Eyewitness wrong – of course the courts must examine every legal challenge. That’s what distinguishes the rule of law from the rule of convenience, and procedural fairness ain’t just a technicality – it’s a cornerstone of justice!!
But there’s an equally old legal tradition: proceedings gotta eventually proceed – or it ain’t no proceeding!! To avoid being fitted with that orange jumpsuit, Sanction Man has converted every straight legal line into a labyrinth!! Procedural junctions are created for another hearing, another appeal, another constitutional question, and another application to determine whether the previous application was properly applied for!! If delay – not relay!! – were an Olympic event Sanction Man would be getting enough gold medals to trigger another customs evasion!!
You can’t ignore the irony. OFAC’s allegations concern an international gold-smuggling scheme, yet the most remarkable extraction taking place has been the steady extraction of time from the judicial system!! Lawyers insist each challenge raises serious legal questions. Remember 34 is less than 33?? They’re paid to be creative!! But Harry Public is entitled to wonder whether justice has become a relay race – where the baton is never actually passed to the finish line!!
On July 29, the CCJ ain’t deciding guilt or innocence, just a concocted procedural issue. Frankly, your Eyewitness just wants the case to reach the courts to settle the substantive issues!!
They say justice delayed is justice denied. But in Guyana, Sanction Man has made justice not merely delayed – but taken up permanent residence in the departure lounge, continually announcing that boarding will commence shortly!!
While somehow never leaving the gate (to that Miami penitentiary!!)
…against lax contractors
The Government’s taken a lot of flak for several contracts given out in its infrastructural drive that just didn’t meet their contractual deadlines. “Friends and family” is the standard opposition derisive explanation for this phenomenon!! But what do they say about the long-promised New Amsterdam and the Paediatric and Maternal (PAM) hospital at Goedverwagting/Ogle??
Two years ago, Pressie exploded about the failure of the contractor to keep to the schedule for completing the PAM! It was the first project to come out of an MoU between Guyana and Austria. The €149 million (GY$31.9 billion) contract – funded by a British loan facility – had been signed on June 8, 2022, with work starting the following year. The Austrian Government-chosen contractor VAMED Engineering was later acquired by a German hospital construction company. So much for Teutonic efficiency!!
Well, it seems the Govt has finally said that enough after another two years!! They stopped payments last year, and to VAMED’s threat of international arbitration, they’ve responded, “Bring it on!!”
…for colonialism?
After Argentina whupped the Brits in their World Cup semi-finals, the Argentines displayed a banner announcing the Malvinas/Falklands are theirs. FIFA’s investigating the importation of politics. But England just responded that the Falklands remain theirs!!
Shouldn’t THEY be investigated??
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