OPINION: Justice Abel stands up, speaks out (welcome, sir)

Last Updated on Thursday, 24 September 2026, 10:32 by Written By Denis Chabrol

By GHK Lall

At last!  At last, someone with the courage.  To contemplate and question, even challenge, the mighty American Eagle.  It plucks Guyana’s young in its talons.  Who knows what next it will swoop to destroy?  My thanks to Justice Courtney Abel, in his silver headed years, the head of the UG Department of Law spoke.  He said what had to be said.  Squeeze Justice Gino Persaud yesterday, there could be others today.  Definitely some hesitancy tomorrow.  Will this ruling please the president?  How will the U.S. ambassador react to a judgment away from public sight?  What will the U.S. State Dept do?

In my first writing in the immediate aftermath of the “visa review” development impacting Justice Persaud, I alluded to the chilling effect on the fraternity.  Looking over its shoulder with tentativeness, in timidity.  Second-guessing itself.  Less for judicial sagacity and acumen, and more of where would the U.S. stand on this?  Bluntly, Guyana’s judiciary now operates in fear.  It may not be palpable; but it is audible.  It is detectable.  Fear has its own smell.

This is now less a matter of judicial independence, and more of this.  What merit, what standing, national sovereignty?  The U.S. barged into Caracas and took out a president.  The U.S. put in its own president.  In Guyana, the U.S. reached above and around Guyana’s president, Guyana’s Judicial Service Commission, and Guyana’s chancellor and effectively sidelined a sitting judge.  Is Guyana still a country, or is it the doormat and toilet of the U.S?  If President Ali has any salt left in him, he should raise that question with Ambassador Nicole D. Theriot in their next face-to-face encounter.  I would have grabbed the nearest phone, and let her hear that in the sharpest terms.  But the so-called special relationship reminds of the limitations to what he signed onto, his role.  A bit player, a nobody, in the Great American chessboard.

Hon Attorney General Anil Nandlall faced the public from his cyberspace den and had his say.  The PPP Govt is not pleased with Justice Persaud’s rulings.  But the PPP Govt’s hands are clean.  No involvement in U.S. “view review”.  Neither initiation tabled nor hint whispered off the record.  What to make of the Hon Anil Nandlall’s representation in this instance?  I struggle.  For he is the same scholarly citizen, a creature of impeccable integrity, who has sold many (and himself) that Guyana is a country where the rule of law reigns, and respect for law and order is paramount.  When I look at what Guyanese have for law, and how men feature dominantly in how that law is sometimes applied, sometimes weaponized, and oftentimes wielded, there is difficulty reconciling the PPP Govt being hands-off re visa review, despite its disagreement(s) with Justice Persaud.

Of greater concern to me is how the U.S. can swoop and savage a sitting Guyanese jurist.  If there, then where else, and with what limit?  Where is the Guyana Bar Assoc?  Where is the Judicial Service Comm?  Did the chancellor speak and I didn’t read?  I have read about cultural imperialism.  Now I come across the blatant and arrogant projection of American imperialism into the very heart of the Guyana construct.  The Ugly American is back.  He is uglier than before.  Go ahead!  Mark me.  Make my day.

What is Guyana and Guyanese today?  Sitting ducks or turkeys in a barrel?  A pack of bleating sheep just shorn of its wool, and left with only its meow?  There is passive and there is docile.  Good Lord! Does it have to be of the most obsequious and odious variety?  The White man rules and Guyanese are only too delighted to roll in the mud and the filth and in utter self-disgrace.  Pause and absorb this contrast.  Americans can be attracted to and approve money launderers in Venezuela, but is full of righteous wrath re Gino Persaud.  There are White people I will always love.  But how can I ever love hypocrisy, the bully, and the sneaky?

Whatever this “visa review” entails, it had better be good.  Wherever other Guyanese are, there was Justice Courtney Abel.  And next to him, little ole me.