Jurist hits racism and bobol

Eminent Caribbean attorney/jurist, Dr Fenton Ramsahoye, slammed those who use racism to cover up their corruption and incompetence, and suggested ways to counter that. He was addressing the Indian Arrival Day dinner held by the Maha Sabha on Friday at Crowne Plaza. The function was held to honour Ramsahoye, who at age 75, has had 50 years legal experience, reportedly including the most Caribbean appeals to the Privy Council.

Ramsahoye declared that in multiracial communities, race could be used as a cloak for both corruption and incompetence. He said that if the ruling class — those commanding legislative, executive and judicial power, plus trade, industry and commerce — was corrupt and incompetent, this would oppress the society. In contrast, he said, a country’s progress depended upon the ability of its ruling class to think and act upon their moral integrity. He hailed the descendants of East Indian immigrants for having well educated their children. “Persons of intellectual achievement and moral discipline are not deflected from correct paths by race. Race is fearful of scholarship and integrity.”

Our ancestors, he said, had realised education made a ruling class able to promote economic and social advancement for all people. “We lose and must pay a heavy price where we as descendants fail to achieve or fall below standards and thereby permit and encourage corruption, incompetence and mismanagement.” East Indians, he noted, had been able to live in peace and mix with all other communities. “we have ties of blood with them...We have learnt from other communities and from each other.” But the East Indian community, said the Guyanese national, had suffered from both its own slow pace of female emancipation and from self-imposed exile abroad. “The community has also suffered severely because even within and among its own people, scholarship, honourable character, and a stout independence of mind and spirit are qualities not always relished by people who seek and obtain power and control.”