This article was Published on May 24, 2020
Dear
Editor
Today,
the Working People’s Alliance will mark the 40th anniversary since its leader
Walter Rodney was killed. A Commission of Inquiry (COI) found that he was
murdered at the hands of the PNC and its agents. I was the WPA’s Counsel along
with Moses Bhagwan (in absentia) and took my instructions from Tacuma Ogunseye,
Jocelyn Dow, Dr. David Hinds, Desmond Trotman, Eusi Kwayana and to a lesser
extent Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine. Despite the passage of more than thirty years,
the evidence provided to me was no less compelling or riveting. In his
evidence, Ogunseye told the COI that Mr. Burnham was prepared not to lose power
at all costs, and that he was “prepared to do anything to maintain that power”.
As the French would say, “plus ca change……”
There
were stories of photographs of these persons and their cars featuring in a PNC
issued Recognition Handbook; of Roopnaraine and Nigel Westmaas having to seek
shelter from Burnham’s goons in the cane fields of West Demerara; of Burnham
mockingly promising to send Rodney to the Olympics for outrunning those same
goons; of Burnham’s wicked plot to recruit Gregory Smith to kill Rodney and
then sending Smith by GDF plane to French Guiana; of the opportunistic issue of
passports by the Immigration Department; of the attempted public murder of
leading member Dr. Josh Ramsammy in which a top PNC strongman still with us was
named by the WPA; and of the killings by Burnham’s police of leading WPA
members including Ohene Koama and Edward Dublin. Incidentally I borrow the term
“goon” from the WPA’s official publication Dayclean.
But
the WPA was not cowed and the courage of Andaiye, Bonita Bone, Dow, Karen De
Souza, Hinds, Ogunseye and Roopnaraine and hundreds of unsung heroes, employed
and unemployed, academics and labourers, men and women, young and old, all
risking their lives for democracy, for Rodney, for each other and for Guyana
will long be remembered. When Burnham thought he had covered all the tracks it
was a simple woman – Pamela Beharry – who exposed the plot. It was as Dickens
would say, the best of times and the worst of times.
I
played a minor role in the WPA from 1986 to 2016 but was invited to meetings of
the Executive of the Party. For several elections I was associated with
fundraising for the WPA and for the 2015 elections specifically, Maurice Odle
and I were responsible for fund raising while Kidackie Amsterdam and I were
responsible for upgrading the WPA’s facilities in Queenstown and the
preparation and distribution of the Party’s paper Dayclean. Both from my
knowledge and observation, the WPA has departed from the high standards with
which it has always been associated – a party of high principles.
Having
played a major role in the weakening and the eventual downfall of the Burnham
dictatorship, the WPA has spent the last five years practising some of the very
evils for which so many of its rank and file valiantly fought the dictatorship.
Unfortunately, no sooner was it given executive power than it willingly
accepted the direction that it should use its ministry (Education) and
Department (SOCU) to find jobs for its supporters as the AFC was doing at
Public Infrastructure and Information. In exchanging its principles for power,
it willingly accepted disrespect and indignities from Granger who refused to
practise power sharing in his Coalition, leaving the likes of David Hinds and
Clive Thomas to fret continually. Despite Roopnaraine’s contribution of the
best speeches in the 2015 election campaign, the WPA accepted the rejection of
Roopnaraine’s appointment to the Environment Ministry on spurious grounds. I
know this because I was a witness to those grumblings.
As
time went by, the WPA became tolerant of corruption, incompetence and wastage
on a scale unprecedented in Guyana. It witnessed the rapid decline of GuySuCo
caused partly by the Granger Administration’s failure to follow the
recommendations of a Commission of Inquiry of which Clive Thomas was a co-Chair
and author of a major section of the report. It remained silent. Egregiously,
the “Doctor” party appeared incapable of calculating the majority of 65 – all because
of its embrace of jobs and perks.
I
must say this: I have not heard of any accusations of financial improprieties
being levelled against the party members in Government. On the other hand, none
including Clive Thomas and Rupert Roopnaraine, both famous for their
intellectual prowess, has stood out for competence or outstanding performance.
Dr. Maurice Odle as Chairman of NICIL is another long-standing member and he
will find it difficult to escape responsibility for the many failures of NICIL
which bears a large share of the blame for GuySuCo’s near demise.
The
women of the WPA were always a formidable set of individuals including Andaiye,
Bonita, Vanda and Danuta Radzik and Karen De Souza and individually and
collectively made a tremendous contribution to the Party. It might be an
overstatement to say they were a balancing influence in the WPA but it does
appear that their departure many years ago weakened the Party. This was
exacerbated by the departure from Guyana of a whole coterie of the Party’s leadership
including Kwayana, Moses Bhagwan, Rohit Kanhai and Nigel Westmaas. I recall
driving up to Buxton to pick up Kwayana the morning he left Guyana and of his
dissatisfaction with Ogunseye’s role in relation to the violence which
had erupted on the lower East Coast.
A
movement that was once famous for its values and Rodneyite principles is now
deeply involved in the attempt to rig the 2020 elections. It has been silent on
the attempt by the Region 4 Returning Officer to rig the elections in favour of
the APNU of which the WPA was at one time the second largest party. Judging by
their public roles, the leading active members of the Party are Desmond
Trotman, Tacuma Ogunseye and David Hinds. The first holds the PNC line in
GECOM, Ogunseye remains committed to the romantic notion of a liberation
struggle and Hinds’ dismissal of elections moves him sharply away from the
WPA’s embrace of multicultural relationships and free and fair elections and
closer to the promotion of an increasingly strident brand of African rights.
Hinds
as a political commentator and agitator can benefit from his other role – that
of an academic. He should do some additional reading on democracy and elections
and I strongly recommend to him Staffan Lindberg’s book “Democracy and Elections
in Africa”, a passage of which was cited in a recent Malawi elections petition
case. This is what Lindberg said:
“While
there are many views on what democracy is – or ought to be – a common
denominator among modern democracies is elections … But elections are also and
more importantly an institutionalized attempt to actualize (sic) the essence of
democracy: rule of the people by the people. Every modern definition of
representative democracy includes participatory and contested elections
perceived as the legitimate procedure for the translation of the rule by the
people into workable executive and legislative power…”.
The
WPA in the pre-democracy era propounded and embraced as a foundational
principle People’s Power which must surely recognise the will of the people
expressed in their vote. Hinds wants to reject that vote – to destroy the
ballot boxes. He wants power sharing but refused to engage me on a Globespan
programme on his definition of power sharing. Hinds who is seen as a leading
WPA spokesperson must recognise that Rodney’s party’s power sharing call arose
in a pre-democracy era. The WPA subsequently supported inclusionary democracy
in Articles 13 and 149 C of the Constitution. What WPA’s spokespersons,
including Hinds, are now advocating is the abandonment of these Articles so
that their party can stay in power – by any means necessary, to use Ogunseye’s
words – as Burnham did from 1968 to 1985.
And
just as an afterthought, this power sharing call by Hinds and his colleagues
only arose because the vote count showed his Coalition as losing the elections
as confirmed by the recount. There are some truths which the WPA seems to want
to avoid. That is not what Rodney stood for and was killed for. The WPA should
let him rest in peace. I fail to see how they can now celebrate him.
Yours faithfully,
Christopher Ram
