Dear Editor,
(Kaieteur News) – The allegations concerning MP Deon La Cruz’s alleged conduct toward his wife and a minor child are, if substantiated, conduct of the most serious kind, conduct that no civilised society, and certainly no political party seeking to govern that society, can treat as a private matter unconnected to public office.
This commentary doesn’t pronounce on guilt. That determination belongs to the courts, on evidence tested through due process. What this commentary addresses is a separate and entirely legitimate question: what does a political party owe the public when credible allegations of domestic violence and child endangerment surface against one of its sitting members, supported by police records and witness accounts that are, by all accounts, readily available for review?
An instructive law, given the comparative legal traditions both Guyana and Canada share as Commonwealth jurisdictions — violence within the home is treated with escalating severity precisely because of the power imbalance and vulnerability involved. The Criminal Code of Canada criminalises assault under sections 265 to 268, with aggravated penalties where the victim is a spouse or domestic partner, recognising that intimate partner violence carries a breach of trust that aggravates the underlying offence: R v Lavallee, [1990], in which the Supreme Court of Canada acknowledged the unique psychological dynamics of domestic abuse in assessing culpability and victim response.
Where children are concerned, the law imposes obligations beyond the general assault provisions. S. 215 of the Criminal Code criminalises failure to provide the necessaries of life to a child, recognising that a parent’s duty of care is not discretionary. S. 218 addresses child abandonment. The extensive child-specific sexual offence provisions — ss. 151 to 153 — reflect Parliament’s judgment that offences against children warrant categorically distinct legal treatment, carrying penalties that reflect society’s profound condemnation of such conduct. Courts have consistently held, as in R v Friesen, 2020, that sentencing for offences against children must give primacy to the harm done to the child and to the broader societal interest in protecting children from violence — a principle the Supreme Court of Canada articulated as foundational to contemporary sentencing.
Guyana’s DVA 1996 and the Childcare and Protection Agency Act establish parallel domestic obligations. They recognize that violence against a spouse and violence against a child within the same household are not separate problems but a single pattern of household terror that the law is obligated to interrupt. When I practiced in Guyana I had to defend numerous clients faced in similar police cases, in Regions 3 and 6, and I feel this situation needs urgent governance solutions before it becomes so endemic it becomes unsolvable due to ack of policy capacity.
A political party’s response to credible allegations of this nature against one of its own members is not a matter of internal discipline alone. It is a public statement about what that party considers compatible with the privilege of representing citizens in the National Assembly.
If the allegations against Mr. La Cruz are supported by police file documentation and witness statements then a party that delays meaningful action does more than protect one member. It sends an unmistakable signal to every woman and every child in Guyana who might consider reporting violence within their own home: that proximity to political power can function as a shield against accountability that ordinary citizens don’t enjoy.
That signal is corrosive to precisely the kind of society that any party claiming to champion constitutional rights, equal protection, and the rule of law must be seen to reject — not eventually, not after prolonged internal deliberation, but at the outset, when the facts are first credibly placed before the public and the party leadership.
WIN’s prompt reprimand of Mr. La Cruz, on the strength of facts that could be readily ascertained from the police file and available witness accounts, reflects the standard that political accountability in a democracy requires. A party’s commitment to constitutional protection (including the protection from violence and discrimination that Articles 13, 139, 148, and 149 of Guyana’s Constitution guarantee to every citizen, including the spouses and children of parliamentarians) can’t be selectively applied. It can’t bend around the inconvenience of a sitting member’s seat.
The right to live free from violence in one’s own home is among the most basic entitlements any legal system can guarantee. It’s among the most frequently and silently violated, precisely because the violence occurs behind closed doors, often without witnesses willing to come forward, and often against victims whose economic or social dependency on the perpetrator makes reporting itself an act of considerable courage.
When the alleged perpetrator holds a parliamentary seat (a position of public trust, public salary, and public visibility) the game shifts. The victim’s courage in coming forward, if that is what has occurred here, deserves a response from public institutions that matches that courage rather than diminishes it through delay, deflection, or institutional protectiveness toward the accused.
This is not a partisan point. It would apply with identical force to a member of any party, in any government, in either jurisdiction. The principle is the law’s principle, not a political one: that the privilege of public office carries with it a heightened standard of accountability for conduct that the criminal law treats with the gravity that assault, failure to provide the necessaries of life, and offences against children rightly attract.
This commentary endorses the principle that swift party action, grounded in the facts available from police records and witness accounts, is the appropriate and necessary response to credible allegations of this nature against any sitting parliamentarian. WIN’s executive must see this matter through to its conclusion in accordance with Guyanese law, due process, and the societal standard that violence against a wife or a minor child, by a husband or a father, is conduct that no public office can shelter, and no political loyalty can excuse.
The presumption of innocence belongs to Mr. La Cruz before any court of law. The presumption of safety belongs, without qualification or delay, to his wife and to the minor child whose welfare these allegations place squarely before the public.
This commentary addresses matters of public interest concerning allegations against a sitting Member of Parliament. Nothing herein constitutes a finding of fact or guilt.