Dear Sir,
MR Editor, please allow me some space to reply to Lincoln Lewis’s rant, Stabroek News, March 21st, 2018. What Lewis said, we have heard ad nauseam. There was nothing new, it was the same old rant about defending and helping the downtrodden.
The crux of this matter is, who hired these two gentlemen in the first place. Their strident calls that it is the government who pulled the strings that is responsible for their dismissal, puts one in the position to assume: (fully recognising the dictum to assume) that they were either solicited, invited, requested, begged or even coerced to lend their expertise to the slumbering Chronicle.

Now if a government person – man or woman — did entreat them to come aboard, then in the name of transparency, it is incumbent for the two to make the situation crystal. If not, they owe the Editor of the Chronicle an apology. In their tantrums they have completely ignored him. He has been vilified and cast aside as someone who does not have a clue about his own worth or position at the newspaper.
Anyone who read the Chronicle during Lewis’ and Hinds’ sojourn could have easily recognised it was a bed made for their personal agenda. Lewis with all of the union undertaking (not forgetting Rusal) along with his profound knowledge of the government’s inadequacy; and Hinds’s foresight into politics that is unparalleled.

Two things in Lewis’s rant struck me. According to him, “when I stood at the rostrum at the Labour Day rally and called on the workers/citizens to fire the PPP/C and hire the APNU+AFC come 15th May!” and the second thing was his boast: “when the current government was in opposition it benefited from my criticisms of the PPP/C government.” If Lewis did not allow his great activist ego to get in the way and was astute as he should have been, he would have placed his ears to the ground and listened to the “Tom-Toms” that were constantly beating out two words to the PPP/C “Get Out…” Patting himself on the back, thinking that his speeches made an impact is naive at best and self-aggrandisement at worst.

Lewis failed to recognise that the voting people in Guyana had had enough of the type of governance that the PPP/C espoused and were prepared to remove them by any means necessary. He missed how euphoric the population was after the results came out. The weight had been lifted from their shoulders. It compelled residents to dance in the streets. Lewis, like some other people in Guyana speaking from their lofty positions, cannot see any positives taking place in this country. Their mantra is to put down and criticise. They can only see the dirty underwear — real or imagined.
On the matter of the subvention, its reinstatement was a favour granted by the coalition. For sure, if the PPP/C had won the elections, there would have been no subvention, regardless of what Burnham did in the past.

Regards
Milton Bruce