Dr. Lewis: I asked her to desist and drop the issue!

Chairman of the New Democratic Party (NDP) Linton Lewis said he pleaded with former senator Anesia Baptiste not to write the letter which ultimately led to the revocation of her senatorial appointment.{{more}}

He is also denying that he told Baptiste that Party President Arnhim Eustace did not have the authority to make policy, in the way he did, at the Party’s strategy meeting of April 17, 2012.

Lewis said he would not say that Baptiste is lying, rather, she may have misunderstood him.

“I am not saying that she is lying… for the most part, people misunderstand and misrepresent things, and I don’t like to use the word lie.”

At a press conference last Wednesday, Baptiste said after the strategy meeting, she received a telephone call from Lewis, who told her that Eustace could not make a policy like that, without going to the Party’s Executive Committee.

“He said he (Eustace) could not have formulated a policy like that without meeting with the party’s executive and I told him that he as the chairman should tell that to Mr Eustace,” Baptiste said.

Lewis, speaking on We FM yesterday morning, said he only called Baptiste in his capacity of Chairman, because he was asked to do so by someone who had heard that something was brewing.

“I am not in the habit of contacting her, and I did so by telephone and asked her to desist, not to continue with this issue, to drop it.

“The issue of policy and so on came up and I said yes, the Central Executive is the one that is responsible for policy of the party. The policies of the party are enshrined in the Constitution.

“We were not dealing with the policy. I said that is not the issue. The issue is … that a person ought not to be criticizing other religions and you ought to stop it.

“She indicated to me that she was going to write. I said no, I begged her please, I begged her, I said do not write.”

“I did not say the Leader cannot make policy. That was not a policy, that was a prohibition and prohibitions are made in order to achieve policy,” Lewis explained.

He also said there is some confusion, as the policy of a party is a statement of intent.

Lewis supports Eustace’s claim that all the other members present at the meeting agreed with the policy.

“I agreed with it, I spoke about it. The reason I called her was to [ask her to] desist from it, because I agreed with it. I didn’t find anything wrong about it, everything was right about it.”

Meanwhile, Baptiste’s claims that she had been treated badly by the party, have been dismissed by Lewis, who said she had not gone through one quarter of the “trials and tribulations” he had.

He said her contribution was not in any way close to that he and many others in the Party had made.

“I think it was passion, rather than wisdom, that we heard,” he said, referring to her presentation at the press conference last Wednesday.

“I don’t think she realizes the damage which has been done to her. It is most unfortunate. She could have been passionate; she could have responded if she thought she was hard done by, but I think she went much too far in the process,” Lewis said.