Dear Editor,
The Attorney General’s Chambers letter in yesterday’s SN `Attorney General’s Chambers has maintained a respectable success rate in the local courts’ is filled with lies, half-truths and innuendos, apart from being quite libellous to me. I have never applied for any position whatsoever in the AG’s Chambers. I consider it a disservice to my career to work with someone like Basil Williams, who fought for and virtually awarded himself Silk, his lifelong ambition to self-aggrandizement.
A deliberate falsehood filled and published with malice is actionable as a tort of defamation. Mr. AG you have committed an egregious tort. You knew that your statement was false, or did not care whether it was false and you published it with the aim of injuring me in my professions.
As a holder of public office, which has been filled in the past by persons of high repute, the AG ought to be circumspect and cautious in publishing such unmitigated falsehoods.
In his earlier career he worked in the Office of the President and referred to himself as Legal Advisor to President LFS Burnham, QC and later President Desmond Hoyte SC. Imagine a young lawyer being a legal adviser to such distinguished legal personages? His job title was Legal Assistant in the Political Division of the Office of the President. At that time in the early 1980s I worked at Clarke and Martin, the leading law firm at the time which was founded by Mr. Burnham and Eric Clarke. Burnham knew me since 1960 when the firm was established and offered me that position, but my late wife did not want me to get involved in the politics. I had to ask Mr. Clarke, my mentor, to rescue me from the President’s offer because in those days it was unknown and unheard of to refuse President Burnham.
As a matter of fact the same Basil Williams sent two matters for me to do for him which I obliged, but Mr. Clarke told me to stop because Williams was using me.
His tendentious statements are a scurrilous attack on my integrity and reputation.
I left Guyana since 1986, and am licensed to practice law in the Southern District of New York and several Caribbean islands. It would be foolhardy of me to leave the United States where I enjoy a good life to return to Guyana where there is skulduggery, left right and centre. In conclusion, the last thing I would want to do is to work with Williams. God forbid.
Yours faithfully,
Oscar Ramjeet
