A GUY'S VIEW - Land of lawlessness
“Injustice and lawlessness is the greatest terror a government can ever enforce on its own people!”
– Mehmet Murat ildan.
“Justice suffers when men refuse to stand firm for what is right. If we don’t fight lawlessness, it prevails. If we don’t establish the truth in our nations, truth becomes foreign in the country. God says there is no man when there is nobody who stands for the truth.”
– Sunday Adelaja.
Lawlessness can unravel the best efforts at nation building. If this country is not to descend into a modern version of the Wild West, great effort must go into re-establishing the rule of law and reassuring citizens that Barbados is still a good place to live.
Violent crime comes immediately to mind when the subject of lawlessness is raised, but we seem to have gone beyond that stage in terms of the widespread of wrong. In fact, so developed is our sense of lawlessness, that we are now stamping wrongdoing with a seal of approval.
The latest outrage is the Government’s declaration that it will no longer respect the rights of private land owners and facilitate the comfort of those who choose to take unlawful possession of others’ lands.
Persons have often wondered how could a man move onto another’s land, build a house without the approval or acknowledgement of the owner of that land, and secure the supply of
utilities to the illegally built structure. Persons have built mansions on land that they never paid for or otherwise lawfully acquired, and those palaces are equipped with electricity, landline telephone services and water supply.
This culture of illegally taking possession of other people’s lands was alien to Barbadians, for the most part. It is because we have always respected other people’s property rights that there has not been widespread squatting here. As the population features of Barbados change, so too has been the taste for squatting.
Squatters have never had state approval.
What they do is wrong in a capitalist state in which high importance is placed on the rights of private property. But now, it seems that the state is willing to make this wrong, right. For if it is true that the Government has determined that it will provide illegal occupiers of other people’s lands with Barbados Water Authority services, we have turned a serious corner. The dog dead, as we say in local parlance.
In the first place, a squatter trespasses on the land he illegally occupies. Any person who enters that land without lawful authority is similarly a trespasser. The Government is now authorising its officers and agents to trespass on people’s land to carry out an illegal exercise. The dog dead.
The Government may seek shelter under the fact that the Trespass to Property (Reform) Act, places emphasis on the occupier of land, rather than the owner. But one wonders whether this provides the legal escape required, if it is known that the original occupation was unlawful. It is my view that occupier in the Act refers to a person in legal occupation of premises. An illegal occupation cannot attract legal protection.
A property owner is entitled to repel any trespass on his property.
The laws of this country have not been changed to prevent one’s defence of his property. No utility provider has any right to trespass on any person’s property. Entry on property is lawful by invitation or the absence of a contrary intention. An illegal occupant may not have the capacity to properly invite anyone onto the premises he occupies without authority. It is one thing if the person entering is unaware of the quality of the occupation, but it is completely different to knowingly enter premises on the invitation of a person who you know has no right to be there.
A property owner also has the right to clear his land of all structures and materials of which he does not approve. How one chooses to do that is up to him, but if he does not, he could run the risk of losing his property eventually.
What is the solution? This may be a good time for persons in need of land to occupy, to start building on vacant Government lands and vacant lands of plantation owners. The Government will authorise your water supply.
Where the rule of law prevails, decisions cannot go by favours like kisses. If a person is able to come from Timbuktu and take possession of land owned by Mr. Blackman in The Belle, Mr. Blackman’s son, who now has no inheritance, should be able to go to Apes Hill and set up house and shop on vacant land there too. And be supplied with electricity, telephone and water.
And, if you can, refuse to pay Value Added Tax on anything, for it may never reach the Government. And if your illegal shop does well enough so that you have to collect VAT, do not pay it over. Now that you do not have to buy land, invest the VAT money in race horses.
It is futile to try to live straight in a lawless country. We are in a swift race to the bottom in more ways than one. When law goes, everything that makes us civilised goes with it.
We are on that road and travelling at top speed. What will they think of next?䏯