Moot: The Law is an Essential Tool Used to Ensure the Condition for the Public Health
Esteemed Judges, colleagues of the proposition, valued timekeepers, audience, all…. I, Verlina Albert, stand before you today to refute the erroneous statement that, “The Law is an Essential Tool to Ensure the Condition of the Public Health.”
In order to do this effectively, I first need to define the keywords from the moot so as to be doubly sure that we are all on the same page.
Law – a system of rules enforced by the government – the violation of which constitutes penalties.
Essencial – necessary or vital – representing an ingredient without which the objective or end product cannot be achieved
Tool – something utilized to help you perform a task, etc
Ensure – to make absolutely sure
Condition – state of being
Public Health – the health of the population in a particular region, community, country, etc.
Based on the definition of the keywords in the moot, I can rephrase and simplify the moot as follows: Without the law, it would be impossible to ensure the condition of the public health. This is a flawed concept which I and my team will refute.
First of all, I, Verlina Albert, will illustrate to you in the clearest of terms the dangers associated with recklessly applying the law under the context of ensuring the condition of the public health. My second speaker, Ms. Zena Corbal, will expound on how education, and not the law, is an essential tool to ensure the condition of the public health, and my third speaker, Mr. Kenrick McDonald, will convince you that healthy nutrition and exercise are both essential tools in ensuring the condition of the public health. We doubtless say that the law is “a tool” which “may” be used to ensure the condition of the public health, but never that it is an “essential tool.” It is, in fact, a tool that should be used with much deliberation and caution – if ever at all.
If we say that the Law is an essential tool used to ensure the condition for the public health, we have already started off on the wrong foot as a governing body and have drawn the ire of the society of people over whom we govern. To say this, or worse yet, to do this, is akin to dictatorship and tyranny, and is bound to spark an uprising – something that – as the history books have taught us – is better to avoid. And seeing that uprisings never run a pleasant course, and hardly creates a desirable ending, it is something we wish to avoid at all costs. It would be in our best interest, therefore, to exercise great caution and deliberation when even considering using the law as a tool to ensure the condition of the public health.
I will now quote an excerpt from the 1776 Declaration of Independence of the world’s most powerful nation and the world’s greatest democracy, the United States of America. It reads as follows:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.Â
taken from the US declaration of indendence -written by thomas jefferson 1n 1776
I think we will all concur with one of the greatest men in history – and one of the founding fathers of the most powerful nation on the earth, that the purpose of the law is to secure the freedom and happiness of the governed. When laws are applied in such a way as to create discord in society or personal injury so as to draw the anger of the people, those laws cannot be supported by a democratic nation. In this context, if we are to use the law as a tool to ensure the condition of the public health, we must be absolutely sure to do so in a way that does not interfere with the freedom and happiness of the people governed by the law.
Incidentally, there is a great controversary going on in our world today which helps me to illustrate and prove my point beyond the shadow of a doubt. As you know, we are living in the dreadful Covid-19 pandemic. Over the period of 2 years, governments around the world rushed to create a vaccine to fight the Covid-19 virus. That was a great move. The problem came about when about 50% of the population of a number of countries resisted the vaccine. Some governments, for example the Guyana Government, implemented laws to try to coerce the citizens into taking the vaccine. This led to protests, division, and public outrage. If the government had deliberated over the consequences of recklessly implementing laws under the pretext of ensuring the condition of the public health, then all this mayhem and division would not have resulted.
I make reference to a court case currently being drawn by the Guyana Teacher’s Union and the Guyana Public Service Union with the backing of the umbrella union – the Guyana Trade Union Congress against the government of Guyana to prove my point that the law, as it relates to ensuring public health, is not essential, but dispensable and “often challenged.”
A few months ago, the government gleefully announced that the first batch of vaccine arrived in Guyana. Some citizens rushed to get vaccinated, but a great fraction were hesitant. The government subsequently gazetted an order that prevented unvaccinated persons from entering public buildings, and that private enterprises must demand vaccination card or PCR tests from their customers and employees. This led to a public outcry and outrage. After all, by inappropriately applying the law, the government is trampling on the civil rights of the citizens of the government – and even encroaching on basic human rights.
I will now take a clipping from the Encyclopedia Britannica to illustrate how inappropriate laws can conflict with a person’s civil rights.
Examples of civil rights include the right to vote, the right to a fair trial, the right to government services, the right to a public education, and the right to use public facilities. Civil rights are an essential component of democracy; when individuals are being denied opportunities to participate in political society, they are being denied their civil rights. In contrast to civil liberties, which are freedoms that are secured by placing restraints on government, civil rights are secured by positive government action, often in the form of legislation. Civil rights laws attempt to guarantee full and equal citizenship for people who have traditionally been discriminated against on the basis of some group characteristic. When the enforcement of civil rights is found by many to be inadequate, a civil rights movement may emerge in order to call for equal application of the laws without discrimination.
-copied with fair rights usage from the encyclopedia britannica
Did you hear that? To sum it up, we can say that civil rights are an essential part of democracy and includes the right to government services, the right public education and the right to use public facilities. In gazetting an order that prevents unvaccinated people from entering hospital compounds and other public buildings – because of their personal choice based on their personal fears or beliefs – don’t you think that the government has crossed the line and misapplied the law under the pretext of ensuring the condition of the public health?
The inappropriate and erroneous use of the law to try to ensure the condition of the public health can also conflict with the civil liberties of citizens. A person’s civil liberties includes the right to free speech, the right to refuse any medication, and the right personal belief or religion.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have in our beloved country today fights, quarrels, squabbles, and even court cases because certain authorities wrongfully think that the law is an essential tool to ensure the condition of the public health. Imagine two respected organizations – one governmental and one non- governmental – at loggerheads with each other and engaging the court’s process because the government has taken the immature decision to apply punishing laws to the population under the pretext of ensuring public health. And all this escalated because someone, or a group of people, was naïve enough to think that the law is an essential tool to ensure the condition of the public health. Is this your idea of an “essential” tool? It looks more like a disastrous tool to me.
Second Speaker
I’m going to prove to you that it is education which is “the essential tool” to ensure the condition for the public health, and not the law. The law is a tool yes, but it is problematic, often challenged, and dispensable tool.
Esteemed judges, colleagues of the proposition, audience all, since we are here, and since we are taking about “essential tool,” I’ll tell you what is an “essential tool” in ensuring the public health. The only essential tool in ensuring the condition of the public health is education. It says in the bible that “my people perish because a lack of knowledge.” And that’s the right word – knowledge – and education which goes hand in hand with knowledge – must be considered the only “essential tool” to ensure the condition for the public health. If we educate our children about what causes diseases, they will be better able to avoid it. If we educate our population on how to fight diseases, armed with this lethal weapon called education, they can destroy any pandemic in the shortest time possible. If we educate our population about how vaccines and prescription medications work, what they are composed of, and its possible side effects, they will be able to make an informed decision as to whether or not they would like it to go into their bodies. And if, through education, you can prove to the population that they need not fear any harm from ingesting or accepting any medication, then there would be no need to force it down their throats using “tyrannical laws.”
The law is not an essential tool to ensure the condition of the public health. It is a problematic tool and one that can be easily dispensed. To illustrate this point, I will reference the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic which has pushed governments to enact controversial laws against the general population. We have all seen the mass protests which took place in the United States, Italy, Spain and Brazil because people felt that their civil rights were being taken away by the law. How then, can we say that the law is an “essential tool.” We can say that it is a tool, sometimes one to be avoided, but never that it is “essential” to ensure the condition of the public health.
Third Speaker
I, Kenrick McDonald, stand before you today to further refute the moot that, “the law is an essential tool to ensure the condition of the public health. You have heard excellent presentations of our first and second speaker which sought to convince you of the dangers of the applying the law to ensure the condition of the public health and the merits of the education as an essential tool to achieve this end.
I’m going to present to you another simple, strategic, and readily acceptable tool to ensure the condition of the public health. This is a tool that is imprudently being overlooked by our learning opposition when they say that, “The law is an essential tool to ensure the condition of the public health.”
In closing, I would like to say that we feel confident that my team and I have dismantled the erroneous statement that the Law is an essential tool to ensure the condition of the public health. We have proved to you repeatedly and redundantly using solid arguments and statistical data that the law is not an essential tool to ensure the condition of the public health. It is more like a problematic, dispensable and tyrannical tool – preferred only by dictatorship governments and tyrants. Let us replace darkness with light, dictatorship with democracy, and ignorance with education.
Esteemed judges, colleagues of the proposition, audience, all…I close our argument with a healthy conscience that we have developed the logic, based on facts and scientific data, that the law is not an essential tool to ensure the condition of the public health.
