Aug 20, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

(Kaieteur News) – I used to look at the CCJ as a bridge over troubled waters. Up in the air now. When the expectation was that regional judicial heads would take a stand, they withered, faded, ultimately collapsed under the weight of their own reasoning, and sequencing, their misdirected gaze. In the circumstances, only the frankest of representations will help to convey the distaste over what is now in the public domain. Only the sharpest position relays the disappointment at what should have been a drive to get to the heart of the related truths, but turned out to be a movement in reverse. The CCJ has to be that bridge on which people in this region can prostrate themselves with their petitions, confident that they will not be runover, that no one takes them for a ride. Or for a fool. Regrettably, the CCJ has decayed into a dangerously swaying bridge over troubled waters. The rougher the troubled waters, the weaker the bridge.

It is not an hour to stand on ceremony at the CCJ. There isn’t the luxury of dragging feet, buying time. There shouldn’t be splitting of hairs, in the hope of locating a safe harbour to take refuge. This is a tangled affair. It has stripped the CCJ of credibility. Unless those who stand as overseers realise that the entire entity, the whole machinery, is now under the harshest, most unforgiving, glare, then they are wasting precious time, they are of little utility. This is not a season for playing with words. It is the season for sparing no one. For leaving no stone unturned, no matter how heavy. Or how much apprehension there may be about what lies beneath. Or any fear about where those discoveries could lead. I think that the time for talking and reasoning is over. It should have been the day before those emails came to light.