The Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry (CoI) will be given the opportunity to host one final sitting, following which the commissioners will be given a one-month period in which to present their findings to the president, Minister of the Presidency Joseph Harmon said yesterday.
Harmon, at a post-Cabinet press briefing, said the issue was discussed at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting and the decision was made upon the basis of the amount of money already spent on the CoI.
It was Attorney-General Basil Williams who had revealed that $324M has been so far spent on the hearing, which began just over a year ago.
Harmon was asked about claims made by commission employees that they have not been paid since March. “The problem is that the life of the commission has expired, so really, under the law, nobody could have been paid. The commission’s life has expired, so we have to inject new life into the commission so that people can be paid,” he added, while noting that President David Granger would have to extend the life of the commission to allow for this to happen.
Harmon said Williams, who had been appearing before the commission to watch over the interests of the PNCR, would be working with the commission to work out when the final sitting would be convened.
Asked if there is an ongoing investigation of the money spent so far, Harmon said while the new government is concerned about the “excesses” associated with the CoI it is not a top priority right now.
“The funds have been spent on the basis of a commission which was establish by the president. The funds, as far as we are aware, as far as we know, were spent on things related to the commission. There were, however, in our view, some excesses which should not have been spent in the way that it was done. For example, the money spent on Mr Shaun Samaroo, etc. That, in our view, was money not well spent but we are not prepared to go behind that. It is money that was approved by the president for expenditure on that,” he said, while referring to former president Donald Ramotar.
Williams had said that the Ramotar administration had paid Samaroo, who is a freelance journalist, US$7,300 per month to report on the inquiry and produce a book and documentary on the findings. Williams had said that this particular issue would be discussed at the level of Cabinet.
In a statement, Samaroo had denied that there was any payment for his reports on the CoI which appeared regularly in the state-owned Guyana Chronicle. He listed the terms of the contract which included the writing and publishing of a book on the work of the CoI, a video documentary and the writing of news reports, stories, features and multimedia scripts around daily happenings at the Commission.
Meanwhile, Harmon stressed that “a lot of it [money] was wasted but we are not going to go back on that. We have basically taken a position that we are bringing it to an end with one final sitting and that will be the end of the matter.”
Granger, about two weeks ago, told the media that the CoI must come to an end as soon as possible because it had failed to yield any valuable evidence and had led to a lot of time and money being wasted. “…The Rodney Commission has not performed adequately; it has allowed a lot of hearsay evidence, a lot of time and money has been wasted and I would like to bring it to a conclusion as early as possible,” he had said.
Even though the president has taken this point, the commission’s lead counsel Glenn Hanoman viewed the situation differently. His position was that not only has a lot of money already been spent but that the inquiry has gone more than half way. During an interview last month the attorney had said that to end it now would mean that a lot of money has been wasted. He expressed certainty that if given the opportunity the inquiry could come to an end in 15 to 20 working days.
Rodney, the co-leader of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) and an activist who had openly opposed the then PNC government, was killed in a car near John and Bent streets on June 13th, 1980, after what was thought to be a walkie-talkie exploded in his lap. The PNC–now a constituent of APNU–has long been accused of killing Rodney despite repeated denials over the years.
In justifying the setting up of the CoI, the former Ramotar government had said it wished to clear up all outstanding questions surrounding Rodney’s death.
