Dear Editor,
Now that President David Granger has put on public record his position on the findings of the Commission of Inquiry (COI) into the death of Dr. Walter Rodney, it is only natural that there will be spirited public polemics on both his enunciated position and the Commission’s findings. Unfortunately, the debates, which have already begun are taking place in the absence of the report being officially released to the public.
Stabroek News has quoted the President as saying “……. It is clear that the report itself is very badly flawed and we intend to challenge the findings of the report…..” At the same time he informed the nation that the report was not discussed by Cabinet. In the absence of a discussion in the Cabinet on the report at the time the President made his statement, I am forced to ask the question – Who are the “we” he was referring to when he spoke to media operatives. To all appearances the President is very confident that his coalition partners even before a discussion is held among themselves, will be endorsing his position on this very sensitive matter, which has the potential to define the political character of the coalition on government.
Let me for the record state that I am reluctantly engaging in a public discussion on this matter without having had the opportunity to read the report. However, since I am being pressed by WPA members and supporters at home and aboard to break my silence, this response will be limited and is restricted to the politics inherent in the President’s statement on the Commission’s findings. In this letter I have also chosen to disregard anything the President has said about the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry before he became Head of State. As an employee in the Ministry of the Presidency I recently had the opportunity at our last monthly meeting to hear the President stating his position in a more elaborate manner on the Walter Rodney COI findings. I will be ignoring what he said at that forum, since I am treating his remarks there as a private in-house discourse, not intended for public consumption. Therefore, for the purpose of this letter I will be sticking to the President’s position which was carried in the public media.
There has been no discussion in either the APNU Executive or its Leadership Council, on the Walter Rodney COI. Both the PNCR and the WPA have individual positions on it but the APNU has neither discussed nor has it adumbrated a position on that issue. At the time when a position might have been advertised, even though it may have been on an APNU platform, it was never a consensus position of the APNU. When this is borne in mind any objective observer, hearing the President on the results of the COI, will ask if he has any regards for the APNU, which is an alliance of parties groups and individuals.
I reproduce here the position of the WPA on the COI which was sent to President Donald Ramotar in a letter dated 7 April, 2014 and released to the press almost simultaneously. (Editor’s note: The letter pointed out that the WPA had not been consulted on the Terms of Reference of the inquiry but that after careful assessment it was recommending that each individual party member be free to engage with the inquiry as he or she saw fit.)
It is my judgment that there is general consensus both in the APNU and the APNU+ AFC coalition that the PPP/C government’s timing in establishing the COI to inquire into the circumstances surrounding Rodney’s death was motivated by partisan considerations. It was clear from the Terms of Reference of the Commission that the intention was to influence, to its benefit, the outcome of the impending elections. This represented the thinking of the WPA leadership. While we in the WPA agreed on the objective of the PPP/C, we were divided on the issue of participation in the hearings of the Commission. As can be seen from the letter, WPA’s Executive Committee finally agreed on a position that freed up individual members to make their own decision on participating in the work of the Commission as they saw fit.
For what it is worth it is my considered opinion that the PNCR took the position of total hostility, rejecting the Commission as a PPP/C ploy to ridicule the party and its founder leader the late President Forbes Burnham. In spite of their zero sum approach, they failed to avoid the temptation of not taking part in the work of the Commission. In participating in the work of the Commission they did so as equals and gave it legitimacy. However, in failing to present witnesses of their own to tell what they knew and have them tested by cross examination they paid a high price for this enormous blunder.
One of the reasons for what I believe is President Granger’s lack of objectivity on the COI is rooted in his belief that the COI was/is an attempt by the PPP/C to tarnish his name. This is not without substance, as was recently demonstrated in the Guyana Times of Tuesday, Feb 23, 2016 in a column captioned, “President Granger must have knowledge about plot to kill Rodney”. This line of attack on the President has continued in spite of the fact that he is on record as saying on numerous occasions that he had nothing to do with the demise of Rodney and that at the time of Rodney’s death he was in Yugoslavia.
It is therefore understandable, that he is offended and hurt by these continued, unsubstantiated attacks on his person, hence his reactions. But he is now a politician and has to have “thick skin”. But even more important, is the fact that as President, he has the responsibility to balance his personal hurt/interests, and the responsibility of his oath of office. Having now become President he is expected, in the execution of his duties, to rise above narrow partisan and personal interests. This is the kind of burden that those who aspire to the highest in the land is expected to carry.
On reading the President’s position one is forced to asked, what is he really defending? Is it his personal integrity? His party (PNCR) and its founder leader’s “good name”? Or is he defending the office of the Presidency and the Guyana state? At the risk of being deemed rude by my detractors I want to use this opportunity to say to the President that I believe Sir, that whichever of the above you are attempting to defend you are doing a poor job. In so far as this matter is concerned in your every manoeuvre you are providing the PPP/C with additional ammunition to attack you and your coalition partners. The PPP/C is having and will continue to have a field day by the way you are dealing with this COI report. While that party lost the 2015 elections thereby failing to achieve its primary objective for establishing the Commission it is succeeding in its plan of making the President, the PNCR, WPA, APNU and the APNU+AFC coalition look like political amateurs firmly set on the path of self-inflicted political paralyses.
The President’s handling of the Commission findings has demonstrated that he is being poorly advised. His positions on the report, cannot be defended creditably, it will fall to pieces in the face of critical examination. For example, he is making a lot of noise about the Commission accepting the evidence of a convict as reasonable grounds for arriving at its decisions. What else could the Commission have done when there was no evidence before it to show that the convict was lying? The President, as a historian, must know that history is replete with instances of convicts giving evidence before tribunals which if not challenged or proven unreliable have been accepted as truth.
The President has gone overboard on the issue of the ink running out in the process of printing the report, and in the process he is indicting the Commission Chairman, when in fact it is the Guyana government’s responsibility to provide clerical service for the Commission’s work. In a situation where it is reported that the ink ran out and the machine broke down that fault cannot be placed on shoulders of the Commission’s Chairman. Rather than being an embarrassment for the Commission Chairman, it speaks volumes about the competence of the host nation. .
The President’s claim that the Commission allowed too much hearsay evidence echoes the ill-conceived utterances of his learned Attorney General. However, it is the PNCR lawyer/s who was/were guilty of abuse of hearsay evidence when they relied heavily on the book co-authored by Gregory Smith and his sister Anne Wagner. What was even more noteworthy was the point of the PNCR’s political culture allowing that party to stand resolutely behind a fugitive from justice, Gregory Smith, who was accused of murder.
The President has also expressed concern that a number of persons’ reputations have been negatively affected by the Commission’s findings. But he seems not to be concerned that the WPA lost lives, and suffered scores of arrests, numerous beatings, detentions and imprisonment under the repressive rule of the then PNC. If I was to state my experiences of personal repression under the Burnham regime, something I minimised in my evidence in the COI, in spite of being pressed by the Commission lawyers the audience would have been horrified. I however felt that it was politically prudent not to give the PPP/C unnecessary ammunition in the election period and so I desisted and did not reveal these horror stories. If I am to recount those experiences now the present PNCR leadership, will I am sure, deny any knowledge of these matters, and who am I to doubt them.
Finally, as in war, it is also true in politics that a commander has to be strategic in his thinking and don’t put the same weight on all battles. Some will be more important than others to his strategic objective. In short he has to accept that some battles you win and some you lose. In war and in politics a leader has to master the art of avoiding “entrapment”. I have deliberately evoked military jargon as a way to get the President’s imagination.
Yours faithfully,
Tacuma Ogunseye
