This man is unfit to be part of civil society’s functionalism

Mar 07, 2021 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

I wrote a KN column on March 2 entitled, “What is the TUC’s position on the March 2020 election?” I was prompted to write the piece because Lewis indicated that his published position in the print media was his own and he didn’t sign in his capacity as TUC’s General Secretary.
My adumbration was academic and not one adjective, I repeat, “one” adjective was used in any capacity whatsoever to describe Lewis’s character, face, antics, etc. There was nothing personal in that column. Any school boy can Google it and see the difference between my article and Lewis’ response to same in a KN letter last Friday.
I was referred to as a degreed dunce, a catfish, a nincompoop and idiot, terms used more than once in his missive. Any Guyanese in and out of the land who has read just one percent of my thousands of columns since 1988 would know that this type of language doesn’t bother me. It never did given my background in Wortmanville, South Georgetown. It never bothered me because I know this is what people do.
When I saw Lewis’s vulgarity on display, I called my editor in chief. I asked her to compare the polemical/academic contents of my column with the sordid descent of Lewis. She asked if I want to reply, I said yes, so here am I.
The main thrust of this missive here goes in three directions – one is the graphic race hate that Lewis preaches. Secondly, the acceptance of his leadership by trade unions in Lewis’ faction called the TUC as opposed to the other half, FITUG. Thirdly, how the Catholic Bishop of Guyana can have a civil society association with a character that is before the courts on criminal charges that involves the assault on an elderly woman.
Let’s start with race hate. Every Guyanese Indian that denounced the PNC and AFC for rigging the 2020 election is anti-African for Lewis. But the one incident that should have brought the ERC into play was Lewis’s reply to Vishnu Bisram on Vice President of the US, Kamala Harris’ attitude to her father.
It doesn’t appear that the ERC has a research arm. Any human, in any part of the world who reads about the life of one of the most pronounced global faces – Kamala Harris – cannot fail to miss the non-existence of her father in her life.
She doesn’t mention him at all. And in not one major speech has she mentioned him while extolling the virtues of her mother all the time. Her father left the family when Harris was a very little girl and that was the end of the relationship. A simple Google search could inform Lewis of these facts.
All Vishnu Bisram did was to convey those facts to Lewis in a letter directed to Lewis in this newspaper. In one of the most obnoxious examples of race baiting, he accused Bisram of being anti-African and racist. He accused Bisram of leaving Harris’ father out of the picture because he is a Black man.
Bisram left out Harris’ father because it is Harris herself who doesn’t bring her father into the picture. Interesting to note that Harris is married to a White man and her sister’s first child is fathered by a White man. The point here is that the Harris family is happily multi-racial. Lewis in every reply used the fiction of me being anti-Black. Not in one article, I repeat, “one” article I have accused Lewis of being anti-Indian.
The second direction has to do with the trade unions that are under the umbrella of the Lewis-run TUC. Some of these unions are; the teachers’ union, the public service union, and the two UG unions. All three have Indian members. How could these unions continue to associate with their administrator who writes all the time on race hate? How could they associate with a man who wrote that the president should have cancelled the election of March 2020? What respect this man has for the constitution as a trade union leader?
Finally, the Bishop of the Catholic Church. He was seen in a photograph with Lewis when with the TUC, the Catholic Church, and two other organizations formed a civil society grouping. When I see the Bishop, I will tell him in no uncertain terms how I feel about his association with Lewis. I now ask the Bishop with extensive honesty running all over me; what values to Guyanese society he expects Lewis to bring, given Lewis’ role in the election controversy, his race baiting, his land-grabbing controversy and his criminal charge for assaulting a woman half his size?

Sincerely,
Frederick Kissoon

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