With the huge threat posed to the People’s National Congress (PNC) government in the 1970s by the Working People’s Alliance (WPA), the enforcement arm of the state would have been “remiss in its duty” if it did not adequately respond, former Attorney General Charles Ramson testified yesterday.
Ramson, the current Commissioner of Information, further stated that action against the WPA could have been taken without the knowledge of President Forbes Burnham. He was at the time wrapping up his testimony for the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the death of historian and WPA co-leader Dr Walter Rodney.
On his second day on the stand, Ramson was cross-examined by attorneys Christopher Ram and Basil Williams, who represent the WPA and PNCR, respectively.
Ram questioned Ramson at length on the constitution of Guyana and Ramson said that the constitution made “reasonable provisions for the removal of a president.” He further said that nowhere in the world was the president considered the supreme power.
“There is no constitution that I am familiar with that says that the president is the supreme executive power,” he said. “Nowhere… does the president have supreme power. Supreme has serious connotations… that virtually aligns it to God,” Ramson explained.
When asked by Ram if Rodney posed a threat to Burnham, Ramson immediately responded, “Clearly; you got to be blind not to see that.”
He went on, “If I was Mr. Burnham and I’m the president and a man telling me I got to move out of office by a certain time, I would feel very threatened.”
Ram quickly followed up, “And you’d do what?”
“What I would do?” Ramson questioned before adding, “Well, you think about it.”
After laughter died down from those in attendance, Ram went on to ask Ramson if he believed that Burnham had the capacity at his disposal to kill Rodney in the manner in which he had died.
“Remember security forces are bound to protect the government and there’s not only official security forces,” was his response.
When it was his turn, Williams questioned, “Would you say that the WPA basically had declared war against the government of the day?”
Ramson replied in the affirmative and noted that there were cases where one WPA member had been found with a bomb, while another had been found with a detonator in Linden, “the PNC stronghold.” According to Ramson, these were clear indicators that the WPA was ready “to go to battle.”
“So it was clear then that the WPA operatives had access to weapons and bombs?” Williams questioned. “Those who got caught,” Ramson said before adding, “It had PNC people with weapons too but the police didn’t catch them.”
Williams further questioned whether the state, in light of the threats posed by the WPA, would have to protect itself. Ramson stated that he “would not disagree” and commented, “If you’re found with bomb making equipment and the political thermostat is so high, I would assume that the state has to react… and they would be remiss in their duty if they did not make considerable responses.” He added that the enforcement arm could have acted without the knowledge of the politicians of the day.
Ramson went on to say that if someone possessed walkie-talkies, he would be taking a “serious risk” as there were no private persons in the country at the time who had access to the communication device. “He took a risk that the likely result would be death because a walkie-talkie is a weapon,” Ramson said.
Motives
Ras Leon Saul, Secretary of the Guyana Reparations Committee and the President of the Guyana Rastafari Council, also gave his testimony yesterday and, under questioning by lead commission counsel Glen Hanoman, stated that though the PNC may have had a motive for killing Rodney, he did not believe that President Burnham would have issued a directive to have the noted historian killed.
Saul is a former senior reporter of the Guyana Chronicle newspaper and had been employed with the media house from 1977 to 1981. He had been tasked with covering Rodney’s death and on June 14, 1980 – the day after Rodney’s death – he had been one of several reporters to visit the mortuary to see Rodney’s body.
In his testimony, Saul said that Burnham and Rodney were “two sides of the same coin” and posited, “Though it appeared that Rodney was a threat to Burnham, in fact I don’t think Burnham felt that threatened to initiate his [Rodney’s] assassination.”
According to Saul, both men had come from similar backgrounds and had claimed to stand in defence of the masses while possessing an African consciousness.
“When you look at their development, to me Rodney was a young Burnham in the making,” Saul said. He went on, “They stood for the same ideas and it made us wonder why the two of them had to be at loggerheads.”
He further shared the belief that Rodney had become egged on by his ego and sycophantic followers to oppose Burnham and eventually his diatribes against the president reached the point of becoming abusive.
“It reached the point where we saw two black leaders of Guyana… not working in the interest of our cause. They reached a point where they both had lost it,” Saul stated.
Nevertheless, he said, Rodney’s opposition would not have pushed Burnham to issue a command for his death.
“Anyone… could have taken it upon themselves to get rid of a threat to their system without even being given a word from the head of that system because they would have seen it as their duty,” Saul said.
He further said that Rodney was a high-profile, “larger than life” individual whose murder would have been “foolhardy.”
“…It would have been beyond his letter of thinking; in other words it would not have been to Mr. Burnham’s advantage at that time to take out a leader like Rodney,” Saul said.
Though both Ramson and Saul agreed that the PNC had a strong motive for Rodney’s death, Saul went further and said that the PPP also had motives for wanting Rodney dead.
“Dr. Rodney was a threat to both organisations… Even though the PPP and the WPA seemed to be as one, we as journalists in the newsroom used to analyse and comment on the fact that the WPA was a threat to the PPP,” Saul said. He continued, “So, from our perspective, yes the PNC had a reason to get Rodney out of the picture because of his particular stand… and from the PPP’s standpoint he was a threat to their… acquisition of power.”
Under further cross-examination by Ram, Saul said that the state had the resources to kill Rodney in the manner he died as well as the resources to protect his killer.
Rodney was killed in a car along John and Bent streets on June 13, 1980 when a walkie-talkie given to him exploded in his lap.
Today, Minister of Labour Dr. Nanda Gopaul will take the stand to give his testimony.
