![[Paul Lismore] THE 'GRACE PRESIDENTIELLE' IS A DISGRACEFUL INTERFERENCE IN THE DUE PROCESSES OF THE LAW](https://www.zinfos-moris.com/photo/art/grande/29315241-28438811.jpg?v=1546109900 "[Paul Lismore] THE 'GRACE PRESIDENTIELLE' IS A DISGRACEFUL INTERFERENCE IN THE DUE PROCESSES OF THE LAW")
![[Paul Lismore] THE 'GRACE PRESIDENTIELLE' IS A DISGRACEFUL INTERFERENCE IN THE DUE PROCESSES OF THE LAW](https://www.zinfos-moris.com/photo/art/default/29315241-28438811.jpg?v=1546109903 "[Paul Lismore] THE 'GRACE PRESIDENTIELLE' IS A DISGRACEFUL INTERFERENCE IN THE DUE PROCESSES OF THE LAW")
An unelected, legally unqualified political appointee has more power than all our magistrates, judges, Supreme Court, and Privy Council, and can overrule whatever all these courts of law decide.
That is the scandalous state of our so called etat de droit, and it has been the same under every government. No politician has ever voiced even one opinion on this, but they still tell us that they are servi nou pays...
We woke up this morning to hear that yet another arsehole has seen his sentence of imprisonment reduced drastically. "Ravindranath Bappoo, incarcéré pour avoir sauvagement tué sa femme Sandya en 2004, a été gracié par la présidence... Il a obtenu 15 ans de rémissions pour bonne conduite." So a sentence of 40 years imprisonment has now been reduced to 25 years..This follows hard on the heels of the rapist of an underage, handicapped girl being released half way through his sentence and then committing another serious crime soon after release by the Commission bidon.
I did warn you about this a while ago, about this entirely undemocratic, unaccountable, useless Commission de pourvoi en grace nonsense, chaired by Victor Glover! A post I wrote over a year ago...
THE QUESTION THAT NO PARLIAMENTARIAN WILL ASK....AND YET IT STRIKES DIRECTLY AT THE SEPARATION OF POWERS WHICH IS CONSIDERED SACROSANCT UNDER OUR CONSTITUTION.
Every democracy worth its name likes to boast about the principle of separation of powers as its cornerstone for the prevention of concentration of power, and as the provider for the checks and balances required to make a democracy function properly.
As a rule of thumb, none of us would accept, for example, that politicians ought to have the power to intervene in the criminal justice system because we know that therein lies the path to authoritarianism and the plague of arbitrary detention.
So, why have we given so much power to El Presidente, a political appointee, to overrule the verdict and sentences of the courts of the land? Why is there so much silence over this thing called the 'Commission de pourvoi en grace'?
I cannot recall anyone apart from Harish Boodhoo to have consistently raised this very pertinent issue. And, as usual, our lovely zourlanus and even lovelier politicians, and gorgeous zavokas have all chosen to keep quiet about an issue that is fundamental to the due processes of the law: that the police arrest and charge, the State Law Office prosecutes, the accused has a lawyer to defend him/her, all the evidence is presented in court, the magistrate/judge decides on the verdict and sentence.
Any appeal then goes to the luminaries of the Supreme Court and if people are still not satisfied, this can then go to the Privy Council as the final arbiter. That usually is the end of the matter, unless there is new evidence which points directly to the innocence of the convict, and which was not available at the time of the trial and the subsequent appeals.
Except that this not the end of the matter. After the magistrates, judges, Chief Justice, Privy Council Lords have decided on the case, up props something in the darkness and which conducts its deliberations in complete opacity, and which then decides that the sentence is too excessive, and in some cases, that the poor chap should not spend even one day longer in prison.
All that we know about this Commission de pourvoi en grace is that it is chaired by Sir Victor Glover and two unknown individuals, all of them appointed by El Presidente. And who has the final say on the recommendations of this Commission? El Presidente herself!
At a stroke of her mighty pen, someone who knows about plants and first class seats on airplanes and loads of per diem can and does change the sentences passed by our experts in law! The Head of our Executive has the powers to overrule what the judiciary has decided in our wonderful etat de droit....
Unfortunately, the fault lies in an anachronistic Constitution that allows at Section 75 (1)(a) " The President may grant to ANY person convicted of ANY offence a pardon (b) a respite (c) substitute a less severe form of punishment (d) remit the whole or part of any punishment imposed (by the courts)." In other words, a completely unqualified individual in law, which El Presidente is, can, on the advice of 3 people she has herself appointed, overturn the sentence passed by our courts and judges and, worse, does not have (she doesn't anyway...) to explain to us how her judgement is superior to that of the judges of the Supreme Court and the Privy Council.
In his latest missive, Harish Boodhoo rightly asks: " How many drug dealers and habitual criminals been pardoned, mostly on political grounds?" and has asked the Lam Shang Leen Commission to inquire into this.
Let me give you one or two examples that we know of where an unaccountable, quite obscure Commission de pourvoi en grace has interfered in the due processes of the law. Irrespective of our views of whether so and so is innocent, the law is the law, however imperfect its administration might be.
And when all the due processes of the law have been respected, the Commission de pourvoi en grace still decided to overrule the judges in :
1/ the case against Liyakat Polin in the Gorah Isaac incident which led to the murder by gunshot of 3 victims. He was sentenced to 21 years in prison for the 3 murders, but the Commission of Victor Glover reduced that to...17 years.
2/ The Amicale arson case which led to the death of 7 people, including a heavily pregnant woman. They were condemned to 45 years imprisonment in 2001. In October 2015, a few months after becoming President, El Presidente drastically reduced that sentence, which means they will now be free in ....March 2019. They subsequently lost their appeal to the Privy Council, but that has no effect on the drastic reduction of their sentence by the expert in plants...
3/ Bidianand Jhurry, sentenced to 9 months imprisonment but served only 5 days, following the gracious intervention of El Presidente...
The question remains: How are these beneficiaries from the largesse of this commission selected? Out of 2000 prisoners, how many have the backing of politicians which will then see a reduction in their sentences? As the commission is chaired by Sir Victor Glover, it is legitimate to ask how many applications have been made by the juniors of his son, Gavin Glover, and how many clients and ex clients of Gavin Glover have benefited from the generosity of the decisions of the Commission chaired by his father.
Crucially, in these days of 'Mo pou kass le rein trafikers la drog', how many drugs dealers have been pardoned by El Presidente? And on what grounds?
Is there a politician with the minimum of balls required to ask those questions? I doubt it. Most of them will reply " pa kapav! Nou dimoune sa!"
That is the scandalous state of our so called etat de droit, and it has been the same under every government. No politician has ever voiced even one opinion on this, but they still tell us that they are servi nou pays...
We woke up this morning to hear that yet another arsehole has seen his sentence of imprisonment reduced drastically. "Ravindranath Bappoo, incarcéré pour avoir sauvagement tué sa femme Sandya en 2004, a été gracié par la présidence... Il a obtenu 15 ans de rémissions pour bonne conduite." So a sentence of 40 years imprisonment has now been reduced to 25 years..This follows hard on the heels of the rapist of an underage, handicapped girl being released half way through his sentence and then committing another serious crime soon after release by the Commission bidon.
I did warn you about this a while ago, about this entirely undemocratic, unaccountable, useless Commission de pourvoi en grace nonsense, chaired by Victor Glover! A post I wrote over a year ago...
THE QUESTION THAT NO PARLIAMENTARIAN WILL ASK....AND YET IT STRIKES DIRECTLY AT THE SEPARATION OF POWERS WHICH IS CONSIDERED SACROSANCT UNDER OUR CONSTITUTION.
Every democracy worth its name likes to boast about the principle of separation of powers as its cornerstone for the prevention of concentration of power, and as the provider for the checks and balances required to make a democracy function properly.
As a rule of thumb, none of us would accept, for example, that politicians ought to have the power to intervene in the criminal justice system because we know that therein lies the path to authoritarianism and the plague of arbitrary detention.
So, why have we given so much power to El Presidente, a political appointee, to overrule the verdict and sentences of the courts of the land? Why is there so much silence over this thing called the 'Commission de pourvoi en grace'?
I cannot recall anyone apart from Harish Boodhoo to have consistently raised this very pertinent issue. And, as usual, our lovely zourlanus and even lovelier politicians, and gorgeous zavokas have all chosen to keep quiet about an issue that is fundamental to the due processes of the law: that the police arrest and charge, the State Law Office prosecutes, the accused has a lawyer to defend him/her, all the evidence is presented in court, the magistrate/judge decides on the verdict and sentence.
Any appeal then goes to the luminaries of the Supreme Court and if people are still not satisfied, this can then go to the Privy Council as the final arbiter. That usually is the end of the matter, unless there is new evidence which points directly to the innocence of the convict, and which was not available at the time of the trial and the subsequent appeals.
Except that this not the end of the matter. After the magistrates, judges, Chief Justice, Privy Council Lords have decided on the case, up props something in the darkness and which conducts its deliberations in complete opacity, and which then decides that the sentence is too excessive, and in some cases, that the poor chap should not spend even one day longer in prison.
All that we know about this Commission de pourvoi en grace is that it is chaired by Sir Victor Glover and two unknown individuals, all of them appointed by El Presidente. And who has the final say on the recommendations of this Commission? El Presidente herself!
At a stroke of her mighty pen, someone who knows about plants and first class seats on airplanes and loads of per diem can and does change the sentences passed by our experts in law! The Head of our Executive has the powers to overrule what the judiciary has decided in our wonderful etat de droit....
Unfortunately, the fault lies in an anachronistic Constitution that allows at Section 75 (1)(a) " The President may grant to ANY person convicted of ANY offence a pardon (b) a respite (c) substitute a less severe form of punishment (d) remit the whole or part of any punishment imposed (by the courts)." In other words, a completely unqualified individual in law, which El Presidente is, can, on the advice of 3 people she has herself appointed, overturn the sentence passed by our courts and judges and, worse, does not have (she doesn't anyway...) to explain to us how her judgement is superior to that of the judges of the Supreme Court and the Privy Council.
In his latest missive, Harish Boodhoo rightly asks: " How many drug dealers and habitual criminals been pardoned, mostly on political grounds?" and has asked the Lam Shang Leen Commission to inquire into this.
Let me give you one or two examples that we know of where an unaccountable, quite obscure Commission de pourvoi en grace has interfered in the due processes of the law. Irrespective of our views of whether so and so is innocent, the law is the law, however imperfect its administration might be.
And when all the due processes of the law have been respected, the Commission de pourvoi en grace still decided to overrule the judges in :
1/ the case against Liyakat Polin in the Gorah Isaac incident which led to the murder by gunshot of 3 victims. He was sentenced to 21 years in prison for the 3 murders, but the Commission of Victor Glover reduced that to...17 years.
2/ The Amicale arson case which led to the death of 7 people, including a heavily pregnant woman. They were condemned to 45 years imprisonment in 2001. In October 2015, a few months after becoming President, El Presidente drastically reduced that sentence, which means they will now be free in ....March 2019. They subsequently lost their appeal to the Privy Council, but that has no effect on the drastic reduction of their sentence by the expert in plants...
3/ Bidianand Jhurry, sentenced to 9 months imprisonment but served only 5 days, following the gracious intervention of El Presidente...
The question remains: How are these beneficiaries from the largesse of this commission selected? Out of 2000 prisoners, how many have the backing of politicians which will then see a reduction in their sentences? As the commission is chaired by Sir Victor Glover, it is legitimate to ask how many applications have been made by the juniors of his son, Gavin Glover, and how many clients and ex clients of Gavin Glover have benefited from the generosity of the decisions of the Commission chaired by his father.
Crucially, in these days of 'Mo pou kass le rein trafikers la drog', how many drugs dealers have been pardoned by El Presidente? And on what grounds?
Is there a politician with the minimum of balls required to ask those questions? I doubt it. Most of them will reply " pa kapav! Nou dimoune sa!"
