By Robert Andre Emmanuel
From the halls of Parliament to the realms of social media and the radio airwaves, Prime Minister Gaston Browne and St John’s Rural West MP Richard Lewis both spent the weekend on a multitude of issues.
Originally stemming from MP Lewis’ Parliamentary ‘Questions to the Prime Minister’ over the usage of a building on Friars Hill Road, Saturday saw the two men take to different airways, calling out the other on a number of topics.
On Facebook last week, MP Lewis revealed that the Prime Minister’s son was the sole director of an investment firm, IF Antigua.
“On Thursday February 22, I utilised Prime Minister’s Questions to ask the Prime Minister for details about the property on Friars Hill Road currently housing the Development Control Authority (DCA), The Ministry of Lands and Housing, and the Land Office.
“[The Prime Minister] responded: “Mr. Speaker, that property is owned by an investment group, and I will disclose that my son has some interest in it, and I’ll add here too that they are providing rent-free services to DCA.”
MP Lewis, in his response declared that, “the Prime Minister tried to give the impression that there are multiple owners – an investment group and his son – even though he knew that his son is the sole owner (as sole director of IF Antigua Inc).”
The Prime Minister, responding to the MP’s statement, wrote that IF Antigua had lost more than $800,000 in the deal with the Ministry of Housing as previous tenants were told to vacate the portion of the premises that was to be used by the Ministry.
The Prime Minster then went into personal attacks against the MP, calling the book written by Lewis for secondary school IT students ‘third rate’ and said that Lewis will eventually lose his seat in Parliament.
Speaking on The Snake Pit on Saturday, Richard Lewis once again raised the issue of the Prime Minister’s son and the building on Friars Hill Road.
“And so, the documents are here that IF Antigua Incorporated still has a single shareholder, Gaston Browne III, so where is the investment group that the Prime Minister is talking about? That’s a question that he’s going to have to answer…and we have some further questions because my research showed that the property was owned by West Indies Oil Company Limited (WIOC) and nobody can say how that property ended up with IF Antigua Incorporated,” he claimed.
MP Lewis didn’t present evidence that any wrongdoing occurred during the alleged sale of the property by the WIOC to the investment firm, but he continued to argue that this was a sign of nepotism, in his opinion.
“But look, it’s not looking good because we’re talking about a [WIOC] Board of Directors, of which the Prime Minister’s wife [and Minister of Housing and Lands Maria Browne] is a part of; second, the Prime Minister’s son and the offices and ministries that are housed [at the property] are under the portfolio of the Prime Minister’s wife, so everything there strikes family,” he continued.
The lease agreement disseminated to all media houses, following a Freedom of Information request by our newsroom, confirmed that the government was paying only a dollar for the leasing of the property.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister took to his radio station to once again attack Richard Lewis, defending his government’s rental of the Friars Hill Road property.
“There’s no issue of corruption here…there’s no issue of immorality, there’s no issue of concealment so I don’t know where they are going with it.
“You know, my family has been a business family for thirty-something years, and you’re telling me that everything that they do in this country has to be the subject of political debate, even when they’re doing an act of benevolence?” he said on his radio show.
The Prime Minister then went on to claim that if Gail Christian was “better organised” she would have beaten Richard Lewis in the 2023 general election for St John’s Rural West.
“If Gail [Christian] was better organised and better mobilised, Richard could not have won because the polls would have shown that she was leading, and this is why we decided to go to these primaries because we find that sometimes candidates, they may have good appeal within the constituency, but for some reason they don’t have the type of maybe energy or the connectivity to mobilise as well.
“So, Richard did not win his seat convincingly, and that is why I made the point that in the event that he was to become the leader of the UPP, he will be another UPP leader who will lose his seat,” Prime Minister Browne claimed.
MP Richard Lewis will face Chairman of the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), Michael Joseph, who was named caretaker of the ABLP branch for Rural West earlier this year.