Dear Editor,
It has been brought to my attention that in a press release issued by the PNCR it has been alleged that the Freedom of Information Bill tabled by me in the National Assembly was in effect a bill that was to be tabled by the PNCR, which in effect I took away with me to the AFC. This is the furthest thing from the truth and it is unfortunate, and perhaps pitiful, that it would be raised now that the bill has been around for several years. I suppose that I am now being publicly “disciplined” after already being maligned and ridiculed on the internet and elsewhere.
I publicly call on the author of the press statement to name the date and time when I was given this responsibility by Mr. H. D. Hoyte and the Central Executive Committee to prepare and present a Freedom of Information Bill. At best I recall a conversation in 1998 with Mr. Hoyte and Mr. Deryck Bernard about us tabling such a bill, just before a motion of no confidence in the government, but nothing ever came out of that conversation as did many other worthwhile suggestions others had presented.
Nevertheless, I welcome the support now offered after almost two years of struggle to move the process forward where our only allies were some patriotic Guyanese, and the Indian based NGO the Human Rights Initiative which was instrumental in settling the final draft of the bill long after I had resigned from the PNC.
Yours faithfully,
Raphael Trotman
