Dear Editor,
I refer to the article published by you in the Sunday edition of your newspaper dated 20lh January 2019 entitled “Attorney loses senior counsel conferral after formation of new party”.
A friend of mine had on Friday 18th January 2019 asked me if I would agree to speak to a reporter from your newspaper about the procedure for the appointment of Senior Counsel in Guyana as I know it and I agreed to do so.
On the following Saturday afternoon, your reporter reached me by telephone and after telling me she needed to complete the article for the Sunday edition, I reluctantly agreed to answer her questions at such short notice.
Most of the article accurately reflects what I said save one glaring concoction which is to be found at page 23, column 3.
Supposedly quoting me, your reporter untruthfully reported me as saying, “He said with his 34 years of legal experience, he is more than qualified to be appointed silk, but added that the decision did not lie with him but rather with the judges”.
I absolutely never said that I was more than qualified to be appointed silk. That is a complete fabrication.
Your reporter did ask me how long I had been in practice and I said thirty four years. She then asked me quite pointedly if I felt that I was qualified to be silk. My reply was that that was not for me to say but for the judges before whom I practice.
Everyone who knows me, knows that I am not one to blow my own trumpet. Maybe it was your reporter who concluded from my years of practice that I was qualified. I certainly said no such thing. Indeed, I should say that the elevation of a lawyer to Senior Counsel is not a long service award. You are supposed to be judged, not by the quantity of your years, but by the quality of those years.
1 trust that you will do the decent thing and quickly retract that untrue portion of your article if only to allay my anxiety that it may have resulted in some diminution of the esteem in which my friends and colleagues hold me.
Yours faithfully,
Rafiq T. Khan
Editor’s note: Stabroek News regrets the misreporting of Mr Khan’s comment and any inconvenience caused.
