While former president Donald Ramotar says he believes justice has been served, top government officials and other interested parties have opted to remain mum on the findings of the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry (CoI) until the final report is officially released.
“I have not seen the full report but from what I have read I am convinced that they had enough material and evidence to come to a strong conclusion that Walter Rodney was assassinated by the PNC government and finally we can say that justice was served,” Ramotar, who had set up the CoI while in office, yesterday told Stabroek News in an invited comment.
The report, seen by Stabroek News, concluded that Rodney was the victim of a state-organised assassination on June 13, 1980, which it said could only have been possible with the knowledge of then PNC Prime Minister Forbes Burnham.
The report was delivered over a week ago to the office of the Attorney-General, after the Commission was unable to perform a scheduled hand over to President David Granger. It is unclear whether it has been delivered to the president but it has yet to be laid in the National Assembly or made public by the government.
Working People’s Alliance (WPA) member and attorney Christopher Ram, who represented the party at the CoI’s hearings, yesterday said the party would like the report to be officially released to the family, the attorneys, and other interested parties.
While the cost of the CoI had been cited by the new government as one of the reasons for its decision to terminate its work, which had extended long past the original schedule, Ramotar yesterday said that he did not think it was money wasted.
“I think it was money well spent. This report is very apt at this point and time. It should warn us to never again allow ourselves to sit by and let our democracy deteriorate to this type of lawlessness. I am worried even now because many of those who used to be talking about corruption when we were in power, I am not hearing their voices,” he went on to add.
Attorney-General Basil Williams, who had represented the PNCR during the CoI’s public hearings, would not comment yesterday on the findings.
“CoI report? Check with GINA [Government Information Agency], I think they sent out something,” Williams, who is also Chairman of the PNCR, told Stabroek News yesterday when asked for comment on the report’s findings.
When it was explained to Williams that no report had been sent out, he said, “Eh heh? Well check the Chronicle. I am sure I heard something over the news but I can’t talk to you now, I am in Essequibo.” He then ended the call.
PNCR General Secretary Oscar Clarke said that he had not seen the report and would not want to comment until he first reads it.
Clarke’s stance was echoed by Co-Leader of the WPA Dr Rupert Roopnaraine. The WPA was co-founded by Rodney.
The three-member Commission of Inquiry, by Barbadian QC Sir Richard Cheltenham, found that Rodney, a political activist and academic, was killed by the late soldier Gregory Smith, who was then ferried out of the country in an elaborate operation spearheaded by the Guyana Police Force (GPF) and the Guyana Defence Force (GDF).
Healing
Meanwhile, WPA activist Dr David Hinds both welcomed the CoI’s findings, while saying that it validated what was already known and it should be used as a lesson for healing as the country moves forward.
Hinds, who said that he questioned Ramotar’s motives in setting up the CoI over three decades after Rodney’s death, welcomed the findings but stressed that Guyana needs introspection to learn from past mistakes and look to build a solid future.
“Like other comrades of Walter Rodney, I welcome the findings of the Commission of Inquiry. Although I had misgivings about the motives of the PPP for setting up the commission, once it started, I fully supported it. Whatever its shortcomings, it was the furthest we had gone on this matter in three decades. For us, his comrades, these findings are not surprising. But to hear and see it officially makes a difference. We have been vindicated. Walter Rodney lives anew. And Guyana gets a chance to re-examine its politics,” Hinds, who lectures in the United States, told this newspaper.
“Our post-colonial or independence state, replete with all the characteristics of colonial domination, has been the antithesis of independence. We have failed miserably in the area of human-rights for our weak, our powerless, our sufferers and those who dared to stand with them. We in Guyana and the rest of Caribbean never learned how to deal with dissent in our politics. As a society, we are products of resistance, but we have used the state to assassinate resistance at every twist and turn. The State, in such circumstances became a tool of repression of dissent. It is a flaw that begs to be corrected,” he added.
According to Hinds, he believes that all governments since 1980 have “assassinated Rodney even after his death” by what he quoted another WPA member, Elder Eusi Kwayana, as calling “assassination of the evidence.”
“Some government officials have trivialised the act and in the process diminished Rodney in the eyes of many Guyanese. Some justify the murder by saying he was trying to overthrow the government, he was causing trouble. It pains to hear ordinary Guyanese parrot that narrative, these very Guyanese, 200,000 of them who overthrew a government on May 11, 2015,” he said.
Hinds added that “many well-meaning and some not so well-meaning” say that Rodney’s WPA declined after his assassination. “In their haste to talk cheap politics they miss something fundamental—Guyana declined after Rodney’s death,” he pointed out.
Hinds said that there atre lessons to be learned from the findings of the inquiry and while politicians and pundits will have their say—in addition to many who will discredit it—he hopes it does not become another source of conflict but a lesson learned. “I hope that our government rises above the fray. The government is made up of the PNC, WPA, AFC and others, a Unity Government. As a government, it should not take sides. We have to deal frontally with the question of State violence… this should not be a time for throwing around guilt. Younger and newer members and supporters of the PNC must not be made to bear the burden of an act that was committed long before they came into politics or were born and they, in turn, must not engage in the demeaning politics of justification of wrong. The WPA should not use the findings of the commission to ridicule those to whom the accusatory finger is pointed. And the PPP should get off its so-called high-horse, for it too presided over political assassinations,” he stated.
Human rights activist Karen deSouza, who opted to give evidence to the CoI, also welcomed the CoI’s findings and noted that they revealed a little more information that was expected. She said she anticipated seeing the full report and the recommendations made by the commission.
