The appropriate time for a public statement has long passed

Dear Editor,

As an earlier commentator on the shameful Kellawan Lall issue, I consider it my duty to point out two quite blatant errors on his part appearing in his ridiculous charge of vilification levelled against your newspaper and in his own shameless words.

The first error was that the appropriate time for his making a public statement might be a matter of his own determination. He is clearly mistaken! That time, for a person occupying the position of government minister elapsed several weeks ago.

The second and far more grave error was his statement that: “What is clear is that all parties concerned have indicated to the police that they do not want the matter to go any further”. That is not true! I never did so indicate! I am a very concerned member of the Guyanese public, many thousands of us, for whose protection the criminal laws of this country were enacted by Parliament. Those laws concern all of us who have a right to expect that the legal provisions for a stable, respectful, and orderly social environment will be observed not only by those who, like Mr. Lall, make them, but also by the police who are paid to ensure their proper application.

But something else bothers me. The governing parliamentary party has in its midst several decent persons who ordinarily enjoy my personal regard. Are those persons prepared by their apparent passivity to bear the ignominy that automatically devolves upon them as they tolerate among their number someone so disrespectful of the very laws they help to make and so unsensitive to the insistent demands of basic decency? Surely there must be some one of his colleagues who could assist by drafting for him a simple letter of resignation.

Good Heavens, man!

Yours faithfully,

Leon O. Rockcliffe