Magistrate McLennan and Minister Broomes: Guyana’s dialectics

SEPTEMBER 14, 2015 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER FEATURES / COLUMNISTS, FREDDIE KISSOON

What amazes me in this country is the lack of human feelings, the lack of empathy. If one monitors the newspapers, the letters on noise nuisance are numerous so is bad service by the telephone companies, so are so many other things but never a correspondence on how easy Magistrates take away the freedom of poor people. And if you think other classes receive the same treatment then you are mistaken. Minister of Government, Simona Broomes on a visit to Regent Street stores lamented the exploitation of workers in the retail business and said that how the court deals with bad employers who are charged is sad. What did she mean? I interpret her word “sad” to mean that the courts’ punishment of such employers is lenient. Everyday this columnist gets complaints about the naked exploitation of workers, exploitation that is cruel and heartless. I received many complaints about workers who toiled endlessly in the mining industry only to be deceived by their employers. If in retaliation they steal from their employers, the chances are a hundred percent that they will be jailed by most Magistrates. Merciless employers can be found in the private security sector. It is simply amazing that our women activists have not confronted private security firms on their brutal wage robbery of their women employees. I think a study would show that most private security entities have more women than men in their employ. Could it be that our women groups are so middle class in their ideology that they put no value on those working class women who are terribly exploited by security firms? I did a column on an Amerindian girl whose late hours caused her to be raped while going to the bus park. The owner of this popular retail establishment was so mad that he threatened to pull his commercials from this newspaper. How can you ask women to walk down lonely streets in the midnight hour to get to the Stabroek Square bus park? Go at 10 pm to any supermarket and you will see that although the doors are closed, customers are still being served. By the time operations are completely finished, those girls have to catch a bus around 11.30 pm and head towards the Stabroek Square bus park. I hope Ministers Broomes and Volda Lawrence deal condignly with employers who have their own private security, consisting most of elderly men and they are exposed to the elements and the criminals. These aging men stand guard on the pavement in front of the stores or business places in the uncivilized hours without access to a phone or a secure place to hide if they see attackers coming. Many of them have been beaten up mercilessly by marauding gangs of young nihilistic teenagers. There should be a law that requires employers to provide their security details with a physically enclosed structure. No one in Guyana writes about these atrocities, but noise nuisance is big news. No one writes about the abject nonsense that most of our Magistrates do, the latest is a completely unacceptable decision by Magistrate Ann McLennan. This woman jailed a first offender for forging a Guyanese passport. This man brought no violent act to another. This man robbed no one of their property or assets. He told the court that he wanted a passport to travel to see his wife. McLennan jailed the man, at the young age of 32 to seven months imprisonment. Why not a fine? Why not community service? Even if she wanted to punish him with jail time, why not six weeks? Is there a possibility that many of these Magistrates are suffering from depression and frustration associated with lack of professional elevation and they have become sadistic? When I wrote umpteen times that the Guyana Human Rights Association was non-existent, its permanent head, Mr. Mike McCormack saw red. I think I am in his bad books (as if I could be bothered- my editor, Harris would normally say; “I don’t carry my plate to nobody”). But if this country had a functioning human rights body and it highlighted the bestiality in many magisterial decisions, then maybe we could have stopped so many young people from being destroyed by these questionable Magistrates’ decisions. I have asked Attorney Paul Braam to do a pro bono job for me and appeal this man’s case and ask for bail. It is downright unacceptable to jail a first offender for passport forgery in a country overflowing with horribly violent crimes. I shudder to think what a Freudian analysis of the minds of many of our Magistrates would reveal.