The recommendation from the Commonwealth Lawyer Association CLA to President Ali was that he withholds his assent, due to a range of material concerns.  The president brushed them aside, assented.  The Oil Pollution Bill is now law. The CLA pointed to significant deficiencies in the Oil Pollution Bill, one of which is “Guyana’s international legal commitments.”  The Commonwealth group emphasized that Guyana has an obligation under the UN’s Law of the Sea to work with regional authorities to finalize rules, standards, and procedures to safeguard the marine environment.  In view of the unseeming haste, all three weeks of it, that the PPPC Government took for this Oil Pollution Bill to clear parliament, it is obvious that that was ignored. Further, though the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas requires all CARICOM member states to work together for “safeguarding their marine environment from pollutants and hazardous wastes”, not much, if any, of that was apparently done.  In a region where tourism is such a crucial part of many national economies, this is more than negligence.  It embeds irresponsibility, with an unshakeable sense that recklessness featured heavily in the entire process that surrounded this bill.  The president should have listened, but didn’t. There was no consultation with coastal and Indigenous communities, which stand to bear the brunt of impacts from any oil spill of severity.  These are communities of Guyanese, usually economically stressed, whose livelihood could be altered by an oil spill.  However, those communities, along with the business sector which could be seriously harmed, were disdainfully overlooked by the government in a seemingly mad rush to have that Oil Pollution Law on the books.  And that was regardless of the potential consequences to those who stand to be impacted the most.  It is appalling that lawmakers on the government side of parliament could have been so narrow in their approach to what holds serious danger for so many Guyanese.  (Kaieteur News)