On June 13th, Guyana and the world remembered a true Guyanese hero – Walter Rodney, who was murdered 42 years ago by a thuggish PNC Government. Shamefully, Rodney’s own party, far from extolling Rodney’s virtues, used the occasion to display their trademark hypocrisy, foolishness, and feigned embrace for democracy and shared governance, choosing a narrative clearly intended to bamboozle the Guyanese people. One would have thought they would use the occasion of the 42nd anniversary of Rodney’s murder to make some amends to the Rodney family for the WPA’s reprehensible blocking of the Commission of Inquiry, and for their failure during 2015 and 2020 to publish the findings of the commission. They even supported the PNC in opposing that official cause of death as assassination, and wanted to keep the cause of death as “misadventure”. They betrayed Rodney, again.
It is the PPP that is in the forefront to correct the injustice done to Walter Rodney. Last year, the PPP changed the death certificate to properly reflect that Rodney was assassinated. His children’s books – Lakshmi Out of India, and Kofi Baadu Out of Africa – are now compulsory reading in schools, and the National Archives will now be the Walter Rodney National Archives. How can a bunch of people who called themselves a political party talk about justice and democracy and shared governance when they would not even pretend to care about justice for their founder-leader, a man revered around the world; and instead leave it to the PPP, a party they hate, to do so?
This past week saw the WPA trying desperately to hoodwink the Guyanese people again. On the 42nd anniversary of the murder of Walter Rodney, his party issued a statement pledging to help create an organised, multi-racial, multi-class, multi-party movement to resist dictatorship and to create a new political order based on power-sharing.
For those who immediately asked themselves if this was a joke, it is understandable. But far from being a joke, this is sheer hypocrisy, a total hoax, and it is reprehensible. It is a sordid attempt to bamboozle the people of Guyana. But, as far as the citizens are concerned, the WPA has been irrelevant for a long time, having been consumed by the PNC. Far from fighting racialism, they promote it; far from shared-governance, between 2015 and 2020, they supported dictatorship.
Imagine, other than a passing reference, they barely mentioned Walter Rodney’s name in their statement. Instead, the charlatans in the WPA used the occasion of the anniversary of the murder of Rodney to pledge to resist the PPP. Make no mistake, the small group of persons, who cannot hold a congress because they do not have enough people to fit into a single room, has so much rage against the PPP that they chose to, instead, renew their desperate call for resisting the PPP, making no attempt to hide their hatred for the PPP.
They are not interested in fighting dictatorship; they only want to resist the PPP. The truth is: the original WPA that was fight against dictatorship died when Walter Rodney was brutally murdered. The WPA’s homage to their founder-leader was to then join the PNC in a coalition to establish a dictatorship.
They not only aided and abetted the dictatorship that was building up between 2015 and 2020, they became a part of the most brazen and ugly attempt to rig an election between March 2 2020 and August 2, 2020. This is their legacy. The WPA was not just a bystander during the desperate and aggressive effort to derail the Constitution before and after the December 21st, 2018 No-Confidence Motion. Where was the WPA’s reverence for the Constitution when David Granger arbitrarily appointed Justice James Patterson as Chairman of GECOM, rejecting the nominations of eighteen distinguished Guyanese; and when Granger tried to derail the Constitution with his attempt to sidestep consultations with the Leader of the Opposition to appoint a Chancellor and a Chief Justice?
Do they think we have forgotten that they aided and abetted Granger in disregarding the No-Confidence Motion? And they cannot really seriously think any Guyanese has forgotten the reprehensible support for the brazen attempt to rig the March 2020 elections. In fact, one of their most active commentators urged people to burn the ballot boxes and to cancel the elections, so that APNU/AFC could retain the Government.
On the anniversary of Walter Rodney’s murder, the WPA had little to nothing to remember or say about Walter Rodney. Instead, they used his death anniversary as an excuse to demand power-sharing. The handful of people, mostly hate-filled people who often speak about Afro-Guyanese must only support Afro-Guyanese businesses, must explain why power-sharing was not a viable option between 2015 and 2020. Suddenly, power-sharing is the only option for Guyana, according to the WPA, whose interest in shared governance is ignited only when the PPP is in Government.
These are the very same people who forgot about constitutional reforms between 2012 and 2020, when the Constitutional Reform Committee of Parliament, under the control of APNU/AFC, met no more than four times for a period of less than thirty minutes in total. The WPA was not bothered about the scant regard the Granger-led APNU/AFC had for constitutional reform.
