The Overseas Associates of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) has made a bold call for President David Granger to lay the final report of the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry (CoI) in the National Assembly.
The Presidential inquiry, which commenced in February 2014, sought to officially examine the circumstances which led to the death of historian, educator and founding leader of the WPA, Dr Walter Anthony Rodney.
Rodney was killed in a bomb blast on June 13, 1980 in the vicinity of the Georgetown, Camp Street Prison. He was at the time said to be examining a communications device, built by then Guyana Defence Force Sergeant William Gregory Smith.
The 17-month long investigation came to a premature end in July, 2015.
“Now that the parties have spoken and the report has apparently been sent to the family, we expect the President to follow-through with his most recent pronouncement on this matter. That is to lay the report before parliament and release the report to the public,” the group said Sunday in a statement.
It said it is now for the President to make arrangements immediately for the report to be sent as professional courtesy to all the lawyers who participated in the inquiry; to announce the date when the report will be laid before parliament; and to release it to the public.
The group said it was also pleased that following a call by another major player in the coalition, the Alliance for Change (AFC), the report is reportedly on its way to Dr Rodney’s immediate family.
Earlier last week, the AFC had issued a call to President Granger for the report y to be sent to the family and for it to be released to the public.
“We have been reliably informed that contact was made with the family and the report is apparently on the way to them. We are glad that the government is now doing the morally correct thing by sending the report to the family of Walter Rodney. There can be no reason, nor explanation for the delay in sending the report to the family of Walter Rodney,” the group stated.
It reminded of the “comprehensive statement issued on Friday 15 April by the WPA regarding the report of the Commission of Inquiry.
“We are encouraged that in its statement the WPA recognised the importance of the inquiry to the process of national reconciliation which should unfold in the society. The WPA is the second major political party to express opinion on the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry (WRCOI).”
“These are important and necessary steps. As the WPA statement outlined the inquiry fortifies the moral base for intensified investigations, which must be carried out by the new administration into the unexplained and under-investigated killing spree allegedly masterminded by elements of the security forces and in the ruling political directorate in the last two decades,” the statement said.
The Commission, headed by Barbadian Queen’s Counsel Sir Richard Cheltenham, and including Jamaican Queen’s Counsel Jacqueline Samuels-Brown and Trinidad-based Guyanese Senior Counsel Seenath Jairam, was set up to investigate who or what was responsible for the bomb blast that caused the instant death of the WPA co-founder on the evening of June 13, 1980.
At the time, former President Donald Ramotar had said that the establishment of the Inquiry was owing to the persistent requests by Rodney’s widow Patricia, and their three children.
However, the People’s National Congress (PNC), the major partner in the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) coalition, had maintained that the move was a political stunt taken to tarnish its reputation.
