Shal­iza Has­sanali

Deputy Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) Prakash Ra­mad­har has tipped his hat off to Chief Jus­tice (CJ) Ivor Archie for his sting­ing con­dem­na­tion of the draft con­sti­tu­tion. But while Ra­mad­har heaped prais­es on the CJ's stance, he urged him to ig­nore the Gov­ern­ment's in­vi­ta­tion to meet. "We think this in­vi­ta­tion is a sham and in­ap­pro­pri­ate. I don't know what the Gov­ern­ment hopes to achieve," said Ra­mad­har. Ra­mad­har said the Gov­ern­ment ought not to have di­a­logue on these mat­ters with an in­cum­bent CJ. "It's not for them to call the CJ in on a pri­vate dis­cus­sion."

In­stead, Ra­mad­har said, the Gov­ern­ment should have a pub­lic dis­cus­sion. Dur­ing a tour of the San Juan mar­ket, Ra­mad­har, said the CJ should be ap­plaud­ed for his brav­ery. "We will stand by him. He is a brave man. It is re­fresh­ing to see a CJ, a young man...a man of ho­n­our and strength to speak in the face of Mr Man­ning and his mad­ness." Ra­mad­har said while Archie's words were hard hit­ting, he urged the peo­ple to stand up to those who want to take con­trol of every­thing.

Hav­ing looked at the con­sti­tu­tion, Ra­mad­har said the COP will at­tend the 51 con­sul­ta­tions to show that a con­sti­tu­tion is about em­pow­er­ing the peo­ple and not con­trol­ling them. "We would not per­mit them to sti­fle the peo­ple. That is what this Gov­ern­ment has done with the ju­di­cia­ry. They have sucked them dry and now ex­pect this pop­u­la­tion to sit idly by be­cause they feel we are a beat­en peo­ple."

Madeira: Ju­di­cia­ry open to di­a­logue

The ju­di­cia­ry's court pro­to­col and in­for­ma­tion man­ag­er Jones P Madeira yes­ter­day said, how­ev­er, the ju­di­cia­ry has al­ways been open to di­a­logue on the is­sue of con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form.