Bar Association – ChrisRam.net

I was impressed with the alacrity with which the Guyana Bar Association sought to defend by implication the expletive laden rant by Berbician Attorney-at-Law Ryan Crawford when he was stopped by a policeman recently. Conveniently, the Bar Association avoided naming its member because “the matter is under investigation”, while at the same time repeated Crawford’s misleading statement to the effect that “a motorist can only be stopped by a uniformed police officer for due cause if he has formed the reasonable suspicion in his mind that an offence has been committed.” Moreover, the Bar Association issued a veiled threat to the police officer, and the general public, over the sharing and posting of [obscene] recordings on social media.

No question that any citizen, even those without an expletive middle name, has the right to inquire from the police officer of the reason for his being stopped. But that must be done politely and respectfully, even if firmly. After all, there are some awful police officers, as there are in any vocation or profession, including the legal profession. Continue reading “There are several circumstances inscribed in law under which the police could stop motorists”

Later today, a small percentage of the country’s lawyers will assemble in the High Court for the annual general meeting of the Guyana Bar Association whose membership excludes lawyers employed by the State. Their agenda will focus less on the Association’s financial report or the Council’s report for the past year and more on the elections for the Council for the ensuing year. A year in which the Bar Association and the wider profession have witnessed, oxymoronically, both much happening, and nothing happening. At the top, in a most damaging situation which gripped and then lost the national attention after the proverbial seven days, the judiciary handled in a most clumsy and inept manner a matter that eventually involved the President, the Chancellor (ag), the entire collective of judges, an individual judge of the High Court, and the Attorney General, the Leader of the Bar.

Yet, the now most senior members of the profession were given national recognition by way of elevation to the status of Senior Counsel, and the country’s top judges accepted high awards conferred by the executive. I can recall no period, with one possible exception, in which the judiciary and the profession were portrayed in such unflattering light, bringing the administration of justice the closest to disrepute the country has witnessed. On a more positive note, for the first time, two women hold the most senior positions in the judiciary, albeit in acting capacities not provided for in the Constitution. Continue reading “The lawyers have put their profession into cold storage”