Dear Editor,
The OGGN makes a feeble and ill-informed attempt to refute my assertions (Via Paid Advertisement and Letter to the Editor) that their submissions to the UN-HRC were politically motivated. The OGGN response focused on two issues, access to information on Guyana’s depletion policy and legibility of Laws (unlike their UN-HRC submission which ventured into every possible area, including Mae Thomas and the vagaries of US Immigration practices and policies). OGGN began with their interpretation (or lack thereof) of the Access to Information Act 2011: OGGN would like the term ‘not in the public interest’ to be defined. The history of this term is long and storied and it is often left to the courts of a country to determine, Sir Stephen Sedly’s article appropriately titled ‘Not in the Public Interest’ deals with the issue cogently:
“The preparedness of the High Court to consider whether the state has abused its powers at the instance of an applicant who has nothing personally to gain is one of the modern cornerstones of the rule of law. It is not an open door: for every individual or NGO that secures permission to apply for judicial review in the public interest, a good many are turned away. Some are considered to be busybodies, others lack what Lord Kenyon CJ once called `a very fair case’ … In all such cases, the court has to determine whether the particular claimant has a `sufficient interest’ in the subject matter of the claim.”
For the benefit of the OGGN which has restricted itself to an interpretive source of information, the government’s depletion policy has often been stated as ‘produce as much oil as possible before Zero Net becomes a reality’ in other words, do everything to convert underground resources into finance and use that finance to build tangible infrastructure and economic opportunity for all Guyanese. The OGGN focuses on the claim that Jagdeo said ‘Guyanese don’t need to know the oil reserves at this time’ when what was explained by Jagdeo is Exxon (with government support) is focusing on the production of oil (which is what earns Guyana revenue via our share of profit oil) and not on the lengthy and complex process of well appraisals which includes additional (and costly) drilling and data evaluation. To quote from OGGN’s submission to the UN-HRC “Guyana, considering its limited population, benefits from a considerable number of media outlets. The media environment includes some twenty TV channels, thirty radio stations, four daily newspapers, and about ten popular online news media. All of them disseminate news content also via Facebook”. I would suggest OGGN’s members seek information from more than one (subjective) source to assist with their understanding of any issue.
The other red herring OGGN throws into the mix is that citizens cannot access legible copies of Guyana’s laws “Some Laws are available only as images so poorly orientated that optical character recognition software cannot recognise the individual letters. And how are people – on the coast or in the hinterland – without special software, to read and know which parts of which Laws apply to them?” 1: the previous claim by OGGN to the UN-HRC was that the laws were not in ‘word searchable’ format, the claim that the laws are not legible is new. 2. I know of no such illegible laws, I have never heard any member of the legal fraternity complain or use as a defence that there was no legible copy of the law available. 3: Ignorance of the law is not a defence, I for one have not read many of the laws of Guyana, but commonsense keeps me off the courtroom steps. Editor, everything written by Darshanand Khusial in this ‘reply’ coincides with my original premise that OGGN stands for ‘Old Guys Griping Nonstop’ and, maybe someone just needs to help them find their spectacles to assist with refocusing their vision.
Sincerely,
Robin Singh
