RODNEY’S DEATH: AN ENIGMA BEING ANSWERED : Special Report on the Rodney Commission of Inquiry by Shaun Michael Samaroo : Presidential Commission offers opportunity for national unity, healing : – PNC must answer to Guyanese people for controlling even distribution of basic food: in controlling food, PNC committed grave atrocity against Guyanese : – Why PNC wastes opportunity for national unity, healing? July 5, 2014 WHEN opportunity shows up for a new way of being, of thinking, of developing, it creates a path to build a new future. Such a golden opportunity presents itself with the Presidential Commission that President Donald Ramotar convened to probe the mysterious assassination of global Guyanese scholar, Dr. Walter Rodney. Witnesses show up at the Commission hearings to contribute to the healing the Guyanese nation seeks in the probe, after waiting 34 years for this opportunity. Yet, not everyone welcomes such an opportunity, with a few disgruntled, disquieted complainers criticising the historic Commission as wasting taxpayers’ money, or as a plot to boost the ruling party, or as a way of criticising the People’s National Congress (PNC). Lacking rationality, these critics ignore the concept of historical justice, the plea of the family of Dr. Rodney, including his widow, Dr. Patricia Rodney, for closure and answers to his brutal assassination, and the idea of national healing that stems from introspecting and probing historical crimes. Although the PNC wants the Commission to go away, because the ugly spotlight falls on the party with unflattering scrutiny, the Guyanese nation now holds an historic opportunity to heal a deep wound on its national psyche. Probing the past, the Commission is very much about the future of Guyana. Giving testimony during last week’s hearings, Dr. Nigel Westmaas noted how important Dr. Rodney’s role was in the 1978 to 1980 period of Guyana’s history. Rodney sought to overcome the biggest obstacle that continues today to stymie Guyana’s development. Dr. Rodney galvanised Guyanese, motivating and inspiring the nation to see themselves from a new light. The great thinker succeeded in bridging the dreaded ethnic insecurities, racial divides and grave suspicions with which opposing voting blocs view each other in the nation. Dr. Rodney bridged the biggest divide in the nation, which had fuelled riots and racial strife in the 1960s. The PNC used massive election rigging in 1968 to win majority Government, isolating the UF, forcing the party to play a token third party role in Parliament. This perpetuated the feeling among the elite Portugese and British residents of the newly independent country that the PNC would marginalise their community. Then, in 1969, something profound changed the dynamics of the country. An insurrection took place in the Rupununni, involving families aligned to the UF and its constituency. The PNC sent in the Guyana Defense Force (GDF) to quell the insurrection, defeating the ill-prepared ranchers, with many fleeing the country to Canada, the US, Brazil and Venezuela. MULTI-ETHNIC HEALING Dr. Westmaas last week told the Commission that Dr. Rodney’s role in securing multi-ethnic togetherness in the nation had developed a new way of being for the nation. Guyanese were together, as one people, one nation. But then on June 13, 1980, a bomb exploded in Georgetown, the loud echo shattering that new, fragile ground that lay fertile and ready to develop into the kind of fruit that would achieve the Guyana Dream, the nation’s stunning potential. Guyana started out as an independent nation as the Breadbasket of the Caribbean, as a leader in the Caribbean Free Trade initiative (CARICOM), and as a champion of Third World concerns at the Commonwealth and the United Nations. Rich with natural resources, fertile agriculture land and a vast deposit of minerals, along with strong signs of oil, the country promised much. Its highly literate citizenry, garden capital city, wondrous architecture and vast fertile landmass lay open for a great nation to develop. But then the political split between Dr. Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham happened in the 1950’s, and the 1960’s saw fiery racial riots, with McKenzie purged of one ethnic group, becoming homogeneous, lacking the multiracial ethnicities that define the rest of the country. By 1968, with a coalition Government, formed of a shaky partnership between the PNC under Forbes Burnham and the United Force of Peter D’Aguair, the country was starting to face real internal tensions. The PNC used massive election rigging in 1968 to snatch full Government, isolating the UF, forcing the party to play a token third party role in Parliament. This perpetuated the feeling among the elite Portugese and British residents of the newly independent country that the PNC would marginalise their community. Then, in 1969, something profound changed the dynamics of the country. An insurrection took place in the Rupununni, involving families aligned to the UF and its constituency. The PNC sent in the Guyana Defense Force (GDF) to quell the insurrection, defeating the ill-prepared ranchers, with many fleeing the country to Canada, the US, Brazil and Venezuela. By the 1973 elections, when the PNC employed blatant rigging of the national elections, the country was seeing nationalisation of private businesses, and the State seizing many private properties in Georgetown, converting these to State properties. The Portugese and British class that had settled in the new nation fled, many today living in North America. In this scenario, Dr. Rodney left his progressive revolutionary work and fight for justice for oppressed peoples in Africa and the Caribbean to focus his attention on his homeland. The former Queen’s College scholar felt his own nation was falling apart under ethnic tension and an increasingly dictatorial PNC Government. WORKING TOGETHER He came home to revolutionise the Guyanese nation, with an eye to heal the increasing divides of ethnic insecurities, racial divides and political strife. He led an alliance of national forces to form a national political party, the Working People’s Alliance (WPA), involving a national Afro-centric group under the leadership of Eusi Kwayana, a national Indo-centric group under the guidance of Moses Bhagwan, and the New World group, a gathering of Guyanese intellectuals and the business class, mostly of Portugese and British settlers who remained in Guyana, led by David de Caires, founder of Stabreak News. With strong support from the powerful and influential Catholic Church, which was itself seeing its power eroded as the PNC Government started widespread nationalisation of its elite schools and hospitals across the country, the WPA and Dr. Rodney made deep and rapid progress to unite the country under one banner: getting rid of the repressive, oppressive PNC. By 1980, the PNC was rigging a national referendum to change the Constitution to give itself massive dictatorial powers, a process the WPA boycotted. In this scenario, the PNC announced a new concept: the PNC party was the paramount force in Guyana, above the Government, and the State. Deep interference took place in the Guyana Defence Force (GDF), the Guyana Police Force and the Court system. Guyanese faced a rapid deterioration of the justice system. As the Guyanese nation became concentrated around the wishes and fancies of the authoritarian, corrupt PNC, two things became necessary to survive and exist in Guyana: a PNC party card, and pledge of allegiance to the supremacy of the PNC. The doctrine of the PNC being the paramount force over the country saw the PNC flag flying at full mast at every Government and State building. Under a so-called socialist economic policy, the PNC Government enlarged its presence everywhere, nationalising banks, schools, hospitals, food distribution, stores and factories. The PNC party flag flew everywhere, Dr. Westmaas told the Commission last week, taking prominent place among the national Guyanese flag even at Parliament. In this atmosphere, Dr. Rodney sought to win the support of the Army, Police and State institutions, to go with mass support he and the WPA had achieved across Guyana. The PNC saw this as a real threat to its seat of power, entrenched with widespread elections rigging and absolute control over the society, including the supply and distribution of basic food items. Citizens lined up for hours at PNC-controlled Government-owned grocery shops to secure quota of food items. The tiny quota included two boxes of matches, a tin of milk. Guyanese lined up for hours for such basic food. Hardships on the average citizen had reached a state of profound repression, with the PNC State machinery untouched under the doctrine of the paramount iron rule. Party corruption was rife, with card-holding PNC loyalists untouchable. REAL HOPE Dr. Rodney galvanised in the heart and mind of Guyanese a new hope. Along with Dr. Cheddi Jagan, the main Opposition Leader, Dr. Rodney promised an end to the brutal dictatorial, paramount rule of the PNC. By 1980, Guyana had lost its way, with its high development fast slipping away, as other Caribbean nations soared ahead, including Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and the Eastern Caribbean. Then, on June 13, 1980 the tension snapped with a bomb blast, and citizens found Dr. Rodney was assassinated, killed in his car as he tested an electronic communication device that his confidante, ex-Army officer, Gregory Smith, had supplied to him. This is the period of Guyana’s history that the Commission is probing. And the main actor was the PNC. And the PNC refuses to cooperate with the Commission, with its attorney, Mr. Basil Williams, adopting a defensive tactic of allegations, accusations and suspicions against President Ramotar and the Commission for the probe. The Commission presents the historic opportunity for Guyana to introspect, with candour and ethical integrity, the period of its history that so damaged the nation’s socio-economic and political development. The onus is on the PNC to assume moral leadership and ethical responsibility to stand before the Guyanese people, bare its chest and heart and soul, and participate with ethical integrity and moral fortitude in the act of healing Guyana’s national history. If the PNC refuses to take that responsibility to face itself in the mirror of the eyes of the Guyanese people, its future would only remain besmirched, distorted and deformed. The PNC did these things to the Guyanese people and the nation of Guyana and its own core self. NEW WAY FORWARD After the atrocities of the Soviet Union during the period of Stalinism, and following the period of grotesque apartheid in South Africa, and after the Nazi war crimes in Europe, the world faced up to what had happened to the soul of humanity. In Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost, in Mandela’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the world healed itself of inhumane historical wrongs. Guyanese saw their nation nose-dive from its great potential, to become so poor that the country by 1990 was ranking with Haiti as the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, last in every developmental ranking in all the Americas and the Caribbean. This is the opportunity that President Ramotar presents to the Guyanese nation today, an opportunity the PNC would want to embrace to heal itself of its deep wounds, and to apologise to the Guyanese nation for grave historical wrongs against the new Guyanese nation. This is the opportunity to heal Guyana’s national history, to face where the repressive PNC went wrong, to admit that it failed; to set a new course for a new future, to escape the default future that the suppressive party set Guyana on over the past 48 years. In the Rodney Commission, President Ramotar positioned Guyana to embark on a new way of being, a new path, to build a new future where the Guyanese nation would develop and achieve its potential. This Presidential Commission offers the PNC a historical opportunity, were it to finally shed its arrogance and pride and embrace humility and ethical responsibility: the opportunity to exercise moral and ethical integrity to accomplish what Dr. Rodney achieved before he was assassinated. After 34 years, the nation has the opportunity to regain Dr. Rodney’s achievement of national healing, reconciliation and forgiveness, except that the PNC decides to waste this opportunity to participate, cooperate and engage in this historic moment.
Posted on: Sun, 06 Jul 2014 10:03:31 +0000
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