Guyana’s Attorney General and Legal Affairs, Minister Anil Nandlall has condemned the political opposition for “misleading” the handful of Mocha, East Coast Demerara squatters for political gain on the heels of a landmark ruling.
After they failed to prove legal rights to the Mocha Arcadia/Caneview lands, the squatters were ordered to pay $2 million in costs to the case’s three respondents: the Attorney General, the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CHPA), and the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo).
Chief Justice Roxanne George delivered the ruling last week, solidifying the government’s legal ownership of the lands and its right to take necessary steps to remove the squatters.
During his “Issues in the News” programme on Tuesday evening, Nandlall noted that the case serves as a stark reminder that squatters have no legal rights to the land they occupy.
Nandlall noted that these squatters had refused to relocate from the area, despite being served several notices, and in the face of monetary and other aid, including housing for their relocation.
Most of the over 150 residents heeded the warnings and were offered house lots and compensation to move.
“The government paid some $250 million in compensation to the squatters. [We] gave them titled lands with houses and helped them to move, and on top of that, gave them $250 million in compensation,” Nandlall said.
The AG, in his usual style, flayed the opposition for misrepresenting the situation and failed to provide the legal assistance they had promised the squatters. Moreover, he lambasted them for encouraging the squatters to remain on the premise that the lands were ancestral in nature.
Nandlall stressed once more that Guyana’s law does not recognise the concept of “ancestral lands”.
Minister Nandlall further pointed out that the very Opposition Leader who was so adamant that these residents have legal rights to the lands they were squatting on was conveniently absent when the time came for the residents to defend these alleged rights in Court.
He said that the combined opposition is all about, “bark, bark [but] no bite”.
Specifically calling out the International Decade of People of African Descent (IPADA-G), the AG noted that despite their fervor to approach international organisations with these very claims and their passionate postulations in the public domain, the opposition advocates abandoned the Mocha residents when they faced the consequences of not complying with the law.
“I still have not heard any statement from the Leader of the Opposition or any opposition parliamentarian or politician saying what assistance they will give to those people who are now homeless and, I suppose, hopeless. They used those people, abused them and discarded them,” he denounced.
