Lloyda Nicholas-Griffith, me and our country

Sep 24, 2017 Letters

Let us start the descriptive process in stages so there can be no misunderstanding or misinterpretation by Guyanese who read this letter here. I did a column on July 18, 2017 on my encounter with Justice Navendra Singh. I haven’t seen Justice Singh in ages since he was the lawyer who did pro bono work for me when I asked him to stop the University from cancelling the appointment of Dr. Mark Kirton as Acting Vice Chancellor in 2005. That is a more than a dozen years ago. It was nice to see Mr. Singh after all these years.
In that July 18th column, I reflected on how Justice Patterson granted us two NISI orders that prevented UG from removing Kirton but on the advice of UG’s lawyer, Ralph Ramkarran, UG did not comply. I went on to reflect on those days and how the PPP leaders behaved like Leviathans. I named three such Leviathans – Bharrat Jagdeo, Donald Ramotar and Anil Nandlall.
I got a letter from Ralph Ramkarran threatening libel because the column damaged him in the eyes of the Guyanese people for two reasons – I referred to him as one of three Leviathans that did what they wanted to Guyana and I indicted him of perverting the course of justice by accusing him of getting UG to disregard the NISI orders. There was absolutely no evidence in the column that the word “Leviathan” referred to Ramkarran and I produced two letters from Mr. Ramkarran in which he directed the university to disregard the NISI orders
Independent of me, this newspaper examined the column as against Ramkarran’s claims. It found that Ramkarran’s missive was misleading and used the following words to describe the letter of Ramkarran; “attempts at dishonesty.’ I simply asked Ramkarran to apologize since he was not in the Leviathan picture and he did advise UG to ignore the NISI orders. I never got the apology from Ramkarran. Instead I was viciously abused by Ramkarran in his Stabroek column in which I was likened to pus oozing from a sour. Not one human in this country responded to the behavior of Ramkarran. It makes me wonder why the tumultuous fuss about Ms. Lloyda Nicholas Griffith.
Next, we come to UG student, Renita Chanderballi. I got an email from a friend with the link to the horror story of Chanderballi at UG. So I published a letter last Sunday castigating UG for its egregious mistreatment of students and staff, an enduring cruelty I have witnessed for the 26 consecutive years I lectured there. I made a terrible lapse. I did not look at the date to see that the girl’s plight occurred in September 2016. I was just moved emotionally at what happened to Chanderballi and I wrote.
UG replied in all the newspapers this week and chastised me for bringing up old matter that occurred a year ago and that everything ended up well, UG came to the student’s rescue and the student thanked UG. Now the newspapers are in receipt of correspondence from the student saying that she stood by what was reported in 2016 and that UG’s reply to my last Sunday letter was misleading, deceitful and dishonest. In this correspondence she added more to her predicament than what was reported in 2026. In other words, not all the details were reported in 2016.
So who is telling the truth, Renita Chanderballi or UG? That does not take away the right of the reader to answer the question. For me, I believe Ms. Chanderballi. So where do we go from here?
Will there be voices and pens calling and writing for UG to explain? If you believe the latest intervention by Chanderballi then it justifies my criticism of what took place in 2016 even though I thought it happened in 2017. I included the name of Lloyda Nicholas-Griffith in the caption of this missive here because I wanted to highlight the morbid hypocrisy of this nation that perhaps is more evil than the hypocrisy of all other countries. After this commentary here, the days will pass and the UG saga will die. But the controversy of Ms. Nicholas-Griffith will rage on. Check the papers next week for more comments on her. What a sick society!
Frederick KIssoon

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