Dear Editor,
Thank you for your superb coverage of the passing of Ashton Chase, a Guyanese patriot.
In his practice of the law, Ashton Chase had great moral courage. I saw this first hand as a teenage Magistrate’s Clerk in Georgetown and the West Demerara when Ashton appear-ed for clients during the vicious riots of the time. Ashton was the embodiment of justice.
Ashton and I later attended a regional conference in Barbados, in 1977, on Human Rights in the Carib-bean. He spoke up passionately for fair elections and for human rights in Guyana – in the face of the depravities of rigged elections and thuggish intimidation in the country at that time. He was then leader of the Guyana Bar Association and I was in the United Nations.
Those were dark years, when the Guyana Bar Association needed international support but was not allowed by the authorities in Guyana to obtain the foreign currency needed to become a Member of the Inter-national Bar Association. Ashton explained the issue to me and I paid the subscription fees for the Guyana Bar Association to join the IBA. I have correspondence with him on this.
Ashton’s books on the history of the trade union movement in Guyana mark him out as one of Guyana’s pioneering historians, in addition, of course, to his political, trade union, and legal work.
Ashton Chase represents for Guyana an example of patriotism and service that our current batch of political leaders would do well to study and emulate.
Thank you, Ashton.
Bertrand Ramcharan