…with Rodney
So, are we finally gonna have closure on the PNC’s assassination of Walter Rodney? After all, the Report of the COI – that concluded just that – has been “accepted” by the National Assembly, which included PNC MPs! It’s been 41 years since the brutal act, but if what played out in the House during the debate is anything to go by, it doesn’t appear so. The PNC – including the past Chair of Rodney’s party, the WPA, who’s now PNC – refused to close this chapter of our history by impugning the Report.
Their excuse is that the PPP’s “politicising” the Report. This is the same claim Rupert Roopnaraine of the WPA had made back in 2005 when a CoI had been broached. Only, he claimed, it was the position of Rodney’s widow, Patricia, who was concerned that the PPP would exploit the findings in the then upcoming 2006 elections. Mrs Rodney has since vehemently denied that canard, and in fact personally intervened, in 2014, with the then PPP Government headed by Donald Ramotar, to establish a CoI.
The latter concluded its mandate just as the PNC-as-APNU took power in 2015 – and they promptly (if predictably) buried the Report, which Granger maligned.
Mrs Rodney once again had to intervene when the PPP returned to office last year, and the vote in the House is the consequence. Mrs Rodney has expressed great appreciation for not only the architects of her husband’s murder being clearly identified, but she could now collect insurance and circulate the Report. Her brother-in-law Donald’s PNC trumped-up and incredibly shameless charges over the incident were also scrubbed from the record.
So while, like everything in Guyana, there will be a political fallout, against this background of a widow’s cry for justice, how could the PNC complain of “politicisation”? If the PNC had any shred of decency, they should’ve taken the opportunity to apologise to the widow and move on. Just like they should’ve apologised for rigging elections back in the day – as was suggested some time ago by then formal PNC member Rafael Trotman. But it shows you how the (political) world has turned to learn that the now (allegedly AFC) Trotman was now so deep in the PNC riggers’ camp in 2020 that Granger bugged his phone to uncover their schemes!!
And it also shows how the world has moved for other members of the WPA – most of whom have called themselves “Rodneyites” in claiming to follow the principles of the great man. Some of them are even more vociferous about supporting the PNC – going so far as to sing paeans to Burnham, whom Rodney mocked as having the reverse “Midas Touch”.
…with the vaccine fears
OK…we know Governments have to consider the “greater good” when making decisions affecting citizens. But they should know, too, that each citizen looks at Government’s actions from their own perspective – and inevitably sometimes this may clash with the “greater good”. Hence the rising tide of resistance to the COVID-19 vaccines. Fear of the unknown is a human trait, and it’s good that – speaking for the Govt – VP Jagdeo accepted that these folks are basically simply uninformed or misinformed about effects and workings of vaccines in general, and the Covid vaccines in particular.
The approach to reducing vaccine hesitancy or resistance or refusal, then, is through education. But we know that the pathways of the workings of vaccination – “the science” – is quite esoteric, so that’s not going to go too far. We’ll have to publicise “influencers” – within each sector or strata of society – who accept “the science”, to endorse vaccination.
Priests, pandits and moulvis in the villages, and Drs Van West-Charles and Cummings to the Opposition?
…of the dead?
Your Eyewitness was reminded by the recent execution on Regent Street that when it comes to drug trafficking and such crimes, these fellas have their own code of ethics!
Like the Mafia’s “Code of Omertà”.
