Dear Editor,
Two nights ago, members of the police force including senior officers went to the premises of APNU member Christopher Jones without a warrant. They arrested him. They searched his house. They removed items from his house. They said that reports had been made to them that Jones had Government property in his house. It appears that Jones benefitted from a grant of money from the Government in which he held a prominent position, and purchased items which the police were now seizing.
APNU tribalists decried the victimization of Jones and pointed to a larger issue of Afro Guyanese persecution. PPP tribalists reminded each other of similar treatment meted out to Jagdeo, Singh, Brassington and so many others during the previous regime, and called it ‘karma’.
And in the maelstrom of antagonism, very few saw the larger symptoms of institutional decay, personal moral depredation and national failure.
First, the moral decay and blatant corruption of government institutions: An official acting within the Government in a senior position should never be the recipient of any Government grant, and certainly not a grant which should be available by competitive and transparent processes to members of the public who qualify to participate. That is called a conflict of interest. Does anyone wish to debate this?
Second, the heavy-handed oppression of the citizenry by the politicized Police Force: The action of the police arresting Jones, searching his house, and seizing property in his house, all without a warrant, was unlawful. The large question of who provided information to the Police, and who directed them to act so unlawfully, remains unanswered.
Our right to liberty, to privacy and to protection from search of person or premises are enshrined in our Constitution. The Police Act empowers a policeman to arrest without a warrant in certain circumstances, but the exercise of this power is not carte blanche; arrest is a course of last resort, or it is unlawful. This concept invariably escapes Guyana’s finest, so it becomes necessary to repeat it here.
It is unlawful to arrest a person without a warrant on the report of a past offence unless there is a real fear that the suspect will abscond. If he is not likely to run away, he should be served with a Summons to appear in Court to answer the charge. If he is likely to run away, the Police should get an arrest warrant from a magistrate. It is that simple. Seventy-five years ago Lord Justice Goddard said that the Police power of arrest was only to be used if it was necessary to ensure the suspect being brought before the court. If his name and address could be ascertained the police could proceed by summons, which is the proper course to take unless there is reason to believe a summons would not be effectual.
Similarly, the Police require a warrant to search your property. Fifty years ago, Lord Justice Denning said that the law does not permit police officers to ransack anyone’s house, or to search for papers or articles therein, or to search his person, simply to see if he may have committed some crime or other. If police officers should so do, they would be guilty of a trespass.
I have no sympathy for Lampy. After his conduct over the past five months, he and his equally vapid twin, Pampy, could dry up and blow away. But I am concerned that as a nation we have lost sight of the importance of strong, stable, dependable and independent institutions. And until we recognize that and fix it, our national karma is clear: we remain the second poorest nation to Haiti in this hemisphere, on the verge of failure.
Yours faithfully,
Timothy Jonas
