WPA leaders yesterday said the party is willing to speak about the events that preceded the assassination of co-leader Dr Walter Rodney, on the condition that the disclosure is made to a wide-ranging Truth and Reconciliation Commission with the goal of bringing the country together.
This was announced at a news conference at the party’s New Garden Street headquarters yesterday, with attendance by co-leader Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine and senior members Dr. David Hinds, Dr. Maurice Odle and Desmond Trotman.
Yesterday marked the 32nd death anniversary of Rodney, a historian, whose political agitation had been seen as a threat to the rule of the Forbes Burnham-led PNC administration. He died in a car near John and Bent streets, after a walkie-talkie, given to him by Gregory Smith, exploded. The PNC has since then been accused of using Smith to assassinate Rodney, but it has continually denied any responsibility.
When asked whether the party was willing to speak about the events in the 1970s that led to the murder of Rodney, Roopnaraine said that the answer to that question must and will be given to a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. “That’s one of the things that the [main opposition] APNU also had on its platform and campaigned on. We don’t only believe that it is the issues regarding the 1979 rebellion that needs to be brought forward or the circumstances of this cause,” he said.
Roopnaraine also reminded that a motion that had been tabled by the PPP/C in the last Parliament for an inquiry had said that consideration of the political environment at the time should be taken into account. He added that it is not reasonable to expect that one of the parties involved would come out and make disclosures without others doing so.
Hinds said that the WPA has over the years spoken about the political conditions that prevailed at the time of Rodney’s murder. “So, in a sense, we have already given the opening for not only the judicial inquiry or Truth and Reconciliation Commission but for a national conversation on the politics of the 1970s and 1980s which were not particular to Guyana but [seen in the Caribbean also],” he said. “What was happening in Guyana around that time was a movement in the wider Caribbean,” he added, citing events in Grenada as an example.
“As we struggle for closure in the Rodney assassination, we also feel that this has to be done in the context of national unity,” Hinds further said, adding that whatever results come out of an investigative process should not serve to tear the country apart but to bring it together.
In an interview for a recent documentary film, W.A.R Stories: Walter Anthony Rodney, Roopnaraine admitted that the WPA was accumulating weapons long before the murder of Dr Walter Rodney, the first admission of its kind by any member of the party leadership.
Meanwhile, referring to the motion that the PPP/C brought before the National Assembly during the Ninth Parliament, Roopnaraine said that the PPP/C abstained on it, holding up the process of going ahead with a Commission of Inquiry. He also took note that the Progressive Youth Organisation (PYO)—the youth arm of the ruling party—is now holding a lecture series on the life and work of Rodney.
“I saw on the news that the Progressive Youth Organisation has been holding some events on Walter Rodney and I believe that this is a very healthy development and I am happy to see it. [Hopefully the PYO can put some pressure on its parent body so that they could get moving on the Commission of Inquiry [into Rodney’s death],” he added.
Roopnaraine noted that for the 25th anniversary of Rodney’s death, the matter of the Commission of Inquiry came up and he noted that he had worked very hard at that time on preparing a motion as it was the wish of Rodney’s widow that the Parliament was unanimous in its support for the motion. “I thought that I had had an agreement [from the government] but alas when I got to the National Assembly it turned out that the PPP had voted to abstain to a number of amendments made to their own motion. They made an issue with the fact that we had replaced the word assassination with the word death,” he said.
“The Motion was passed without opposition with the PPP abstaining. I am hoping with this newfound interest of marking June 13 by the PYO, [it] will have some kind of effect on the PPP as a whole to reconsider their position on the parliamentary motion and to see whether they could support it,” Roopnaraine said.
Dr. David Hinds also noted that it was the PNCR that agreed to the wider investigation of all the violence in the society, but this was not supported by the PPP/C. “We want to revisit that. We don’t only want a Commission of Inquiry into the murder of Walter Rodney but all of the violence that has taken place,” he said.
