Dear Editor,
REFERENCE is made to the letter by Mr Lincoln Lewis dated February 17, 2023, in response to a letter from Minister Oneidge Walrond published under the caption, “Lincoln Lewis continues to misrepresent the facts” (KN 2023-02-16).

While I am certain that the minister will respond, as warranted there are a few issues that I would like to address for Mr Lewis’ response is (characteristically) long on invective and short to non-existent in substance.

Challenged by the minister to explain his innuendo against Vice-President Jagdeo “squatting on the people’s interest,” Mr Lewis’s response equates to “I’m going to repeat what I said, he is squatting.”  Similarly, when challenged to prove that Prime Minister Phillips does not perform the role of Leader of Government Business in the National Assembly, Mr Lewis’s response is that he doesn’t have to prove it because it is well known.  Editor, this is not someone who is capable of conducting a serious conversation.

The minister observed correctly that Mr Lewis currently makes common cause with the political opposition.  Any reasonable reader would interpret this as an invitation to take this fact into consideration in making their own evaluation of Mr Lewis’s arguments.  Mr Lewis responded by creating two straw men which he proceeded to demolish.  First, he argued that alignment in thought with a political party did not necessarily imply right or wrong.  This is a straw man, since no such conclusion was asserted.

Secondly, in response to this observation, Mr Lewis proceeded to expound on his constitutional entitlements to freedom of speech, freedom of association and protection from discrimination, none of which were called into question.  In so doing Mr Lewis held forth extensively on constitutional provisions, citing Articles 146, 147 and 149 of the Constitution.  Despite Mr Lewis traversing the constitution at great length as he demolished the straw men of his own creation, he unsurprisingly failed to detour to cite (as he was invited to by the minister) those articles that specify the functions that the constitution assigns to the First Vice-President which (imaginary) functions he argues that the Prime Minister is “not allowed” to discharge.  He then goes on to re-assert the Prime Minister’s purported acquiescence in constitutional violations which he declines to prove.  His real interest however is to perpetuate a particular caricature of the Prime Minister as an Afro-Guyanese in a PPP/C government, and this caricature he is determined to perpetuate at all costs despite having the premises of the alleged constitutional violations cut from under his feet.

Moving on.  Faced with his own words contradicting his assertion that the APNU+AFC government was prepared to resolve the RUSAL matter on the eve of the 2020 elections, Mr Lewis offered a tepid statement made by then Minister Amna Ally reported in the Stabroek News of February 12, 2020, to wit: “There are rules and laws that govern how we treat foreign companies and we are going to use those laws to address this.”

Mr Lewis wants us to accept a statement made by a politician, days before a General Election as proof of the APNU+AFC’s commitment to resolve this issue.
Let us be clear, Editor.

On February 8, 2020, after almost five full years in which the coalition government made no progress on the matter, Mr Lewis’s position on that date was that no one other than President Ramotar had made any serious effort at resolving the Rusal issue.  Today, in order to manufacture a contrast to fit a race narrative, Mr Lewis tells us that his friends in the opposition were prepared to resolve the issue and as proof of this resolve, he refers us to the Stabroek News article of February 12, 2020, published four days after he had condemned the coalition as working in Rusal’s interest.

Editor, in the very article of February 12, that Mr Lewis refers us to for the statement by then Minister Ally. Mr Lewis himself is again reported by Stabroek News as expressing frustration with that administration’s lack of progress.  The relevant excerpt reads: “Lewis yesterday [February 11] told Stabroek News that the union is still waiting to hear from the government on what progress has been made in relations to talks with the management of BGCI. I have not heard from [the Department of] Labour and the issue remains the same. I had expected the government by now to do something. It is going on to four weeks now and it is time we get worried,” Lewis said.”

Mr Lewis talks a lot.  He should expect there to be a lot of his words around to measure him against.

Finally, in the opening sentence of a letter to the Editor published in the Stabroek News on January 6 2023, Mr Lewis described actions of the government in relation to squatters at Mocha as “acts of inhumanity.”

Obviously, the government does not agree with this characterization and has on many occasions described the extraordinary efforts it made to treat fairly and humanely with those citizens.  However, by his own words Mr Lewis believes that these were “acts of inhumanity” and has clearly called for “acts of inhumanity” to be meted out to Mr Jagdeo.   A principled person would oppose inhumanity against any human.

Mr Lewis obviously believes that some humans are deserving of inhumane treatment and this more than anything else illustrates to us the true measure of the man.

Yours respectfully,
Alvin Hamilton