I quote from my article “Speaker of the House, Raphael Trotman, responding to his own inherent sense of right and wrong and the legal genes imbibed and imparted to him from infancy, stunned the House when, in response to a paper submitted by APNU’s Carl Greenidge, he rejected Greenidge’s objections to the passage of Financial Paper No 9 of 2011.” You and I have always been on the opposite sides of the political divide; but we have always respected each other, and I dare say, liked each other.  On my part, because I know and highly regard your antecedents, I have always had high expectations of you, and I always felt you would do the right thing, according to your own unerring sense of right and wrong, as inculcated into you by your own upbringing, which was integral to shaping your character.
When you had the courage to stand up to the leadership of your party and say in effect that “…we have made mistakes that have hurt our Guyanese brethren” I accorded you highest accolades: even more so when you demonstrated the courage of your convictions and walked away.  Leadership is not only by being in a top position, but it is about setting right examples and standing by one’s principles, in accordance with one’s conscience.
I concede that I was not present on the day in question; but I received information on what transpired by very reliable sources – from both sides of the House.
The acrimonious vilification against your good self, in particular, and your family in general, in the basest terms by other members of the opposition did occur, unabashedly within hearing of government MPs, as well as members of your own party, and you subsequently amended your prior ruling, although I would admit that I was unaware that you had indicated a subsequent change.  But if this was so, why make that initial ruling?
However, your response to my article was premised on an erroneous contention – that I had alleged threats had been made against yourself and family, which would indeed have been a serious abrogation of professional and personal etiquette, and a dereliction of my responsibilities as a journalist – if that had been a correct assertion, which it was not.  I made no such allegation in my story.

I quote from your letter to Kaieteur News and the article in Stabroek News, and retort the same to the editors of those two publications, that they should have first checked the contents of my article to determine veracity before publishing a highly defamatory complaint against me and the media house for which I work.
I quote from your letter: “….a story alleging that the Speaker of the National Assembly was threatened by Members of Parliament is so grave and threatening to the national security, order and good governance of the State of Guyana, that at the very least, the Speaker should have been asked to verify it.
References were made of threats to the Speaker, and even to his family background. It was a vile attack on the Constitutional Office of Speaker of the National Assembly; clumsily disguised to implicate Opposition Members of Parliament as the real culprits.”
What I actually wrote, and there was no mention of any threat – real or implied, is as follows: “This pronouncement by the Speaker caused an uproar in the opposition benches, in and out of the Assembly chambers. Raphael Trotman was vilified for this ruling by his colleagues who descended to the most despicable behavior and harangued the Speaker in the basest terms, for hours afterwards – on the corridors of Parliament and in the dining area, to the extent where his entire family was vilified as being mental incompetents, a trait that they castigated him for inheriting.

What I do sincerely apologise for is my assumption that the insults were hurled directly at you, instead of essentially out of your hearing as you had retired to the Speaker’s room; albeit the tirade continued unabated without care or concern that Government MPs, members of your own party, and even media operatives were hearing every word; so the word I used “harangued” implying a personal attack, was indeed erroneous; but that word in and of itself does not imply “threat”, nor could be construed as “…threatening to the national security, order and good governance of the State of Guyana,” nor constitute “…a vile attack on the Constitutional Office of (the) Speaker of the National Assembly.”
It is a reasonable assumption that you were apprised of this verbal onslaught by your party members; and it is unquestionable in my mind, and that of any impartial observer, that you were influenced to some degree by those pejorative remarks from your fellow opposition members.
My grave disappointment at your bowing to peer pressure in this instance stemmed from your history when you preferred to walk away from your party rather than compromise your principles; and for that, Sir, I have no apologies to make for expressing that disappointment – not to attack your constitutional office, but to exercise my constitutional right to record that aberration in your normally very laudatory statesmanlike behaviour, which I have had occasion in the past to applaud.
I will always have high expectations of you; and will never refrain from voicing my disappointment when your actions do not measure up to those expectations.
Finally, Honourable Speaker, your academic credentials far overwhelm mine and certainly you should be able to define the difference between “vilify” and “threaten”, with all the real or implied connotations in the latter word, as you have adumbrated in your letter.