Dear Editor,
I write to make public the concerns raised with me by APNU supporters, who have asked why Mr Basil Williams and I were so adversarial and uncomradely during his cross examination of me in the ongoing Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry (WRCI). What worried them most is what they saw as our overtly confrontational conduct. Most persons I spoke with recognised this was unavoidably real politics. However, they are asking the question why this could not have been done in a civil way. No serious political activist could ignore these concerns coming from his/her constituents.
Let me at the outset make it very clear that the opinions I am advancing here are purely my own.
From my understanding, Mr Williams’s primary motive for his involvement in the WRCI is critical to understanding his conduct in the inquiry, and more so, how he deals with some witnesses. To my mind he is motivated by his narrow personal interest; for him the commission is a forum to be used to enhance his claim to the top leadership post of the PNCR, and a presidential run in the future. Defending the PNCR and Burnham are secondary considerations for him. He has great difficulty separating his personal interest from that of the party; every opportunity is used by him to play to the national and international audience listening and viewing the WRCI. He used tactics that are morally, politically and professionally, counterproductive to the PNCR interest.
Once the PNCR decided to have legal representations on the commission, objectively, that party’s conduct was opened up for scrutiny both nationally and internationally. Therefore, whatever that party’s lawyers do is important; how they choose to defend the party, Burnham, and the Burnham-controlled state demonstrate the party’s thinking, not only in the past but also the present and the future. While Mr Williams’s tactics may be good for the ears of the party faithful, it drives fear and creates resentment in other sections of the nation.
Mr Williams is also hamstrung by the questionable wisdom of the PNCR leadership to adopt a zero sum strategy in relation to the WRCI. The PNCR has denounced the setting up of the commission; they have attacked the commissioners as being instruments of the PPP/C, and any witness who has given evidence against Burnham and the PNCR is demonised, that is, except when it is not in the best interest of the party to go after a particular witness. In pursuit of their defence that Burnham, the government, and the state had nothing to do with Rodney’s assassination; and their claim that he killed himself, while understandable (these arguments are critical in their attempts to absolve themselves of blame), they have made themselves prisoners of their own doing. They have locked themselves in the plot of the intellectual authors of Rodney assassination, with no room to deal objectively with evidence that is coming out of the commission’s work.
Most days before I took the stand, Williams and I and/or some of his comrades cordially exchanged views on some aspect of the day’s proceedings. Let me emphasise that these brief exchanges were at all times friendly. I often told them that the WPA would not be claiming innocence. I made it very clear to them that WPA will tell things as they were. It is important to remind readers that Mr Williams had knowledge of my written statement and oral evidence before he began his cross examination. Hence, he had ample time to decide his approach to his examination. I believe that a good political lawyer would have recognised that my appearance at the commission was not that of an ordinary witness. He/she would have therefore taken into account my past and present history in the political life of the nation, and the fact that I was under oath to tell the truth at all times.
Williams in his judgement decided to begin his cross examination of me in a hostile and politically sinister manner, by saying “you a general sharing out guns.” I responded by saying that I am not a general, I am a market man. Committed as he was to this base approach he did not back off in spite of my objection. He persisted in his tactic of portraying me as a gun-runner. He was attempting to do to me what the PPP/C and their propaganda agents did to comrade Ronald Waddell. He continued this nastiness right to the end of his cross examination. It was this which influenced my attitude to Williams; in his cross examination of me he presented himself not as a comrade or a political ally but as a dangerous enemy against whom I was fighting.
Williams’s cross examination of me was adjourned for many days and he would have had time for reflection. At the resumption it was clear that during the period of adjournment he felt no compulsion to retreat from his assumed position and continued from where he left off. During the second phase of his cross examination he tried to humiliate me by playing on the fact that I am a market person, thereby implying that a person of that stature was one of little significance. By proceeding on that note Williams demonstrated his political and class prejudice against thousands of Guyanese who work in the country’s markets. Burnham who dealt on a regular basis with market people and saw in them some of his most loyal supporters would have called William’s a “political philistine.” I hope by now his comrades in the PNCR would have educated him on his Founder Leader’s respect for market people, and the role they played in bringing the PNC to power.
I am sure that Williams will claim in his defence that he had to go after me because I accused Burnham of being responsible for Rodney’s assassination, and I had also said that Burnham was politically vindictive. However, he should not have been surprised by these revelations; these were not new positions since I have expressed them publicly from time to time during the years I have participated in the national politics post-Rodney’s assassination.
As positions evolved during the hearings at the commission there was no way that Williams, try as he might, could have gotten me to change my position on the key issues in my testimony. A good political lawyer would have accepted that as a given and wouldn’t have allowed me, personally, to be the central theme of his cross examination, but instead, would have sought to exploit our political relations as APNU members to get me to indict the PPP/C on their governance practice and political culture.
But to get my cooperation he would have had to show respect for the following: (1) the fact that I was under oath; (2) my personal and political integrity; and (3) my active involvement in the country’s politics. This Williams failed to do. Late in the process, as an afterthought, he tried to get my cooperation against the PPP/C, but he did so in a reckless way. Let me demonstrate with a few examples: he put it to me that the PPP.C could have killed Walter Rodney. I rejected his contention, since I don’t believe that the PPP/C had anything to do with the assassination. A more thoughtful question could have been put to me this way: Have you ever heard before now the claim that the PPP/C was responsible for Rodney’s death? My answer would have been yes – since I have heard that before. Another question Williams could have posed was: do you believe that the PPP/C is capable of committing political murder? My answer would be yes. I can think of about 25 or more questions that would have been more helpful in the fight against the PPP/C.
I close by reiterating a point I made earlier, it is this: Mr Williams’s effectiveness in the WRCI is affected by the fact that he is using the inquiry to achieve his personal political ambition to become PNCR leader. In the process he has become a victim of his own doing.
Yours faithfully,
Tacuma Ogunseye
