The WPA: Aging deceivers or aging revolutionaries?

Jun 15, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There is an old saying – you have to know when to quit. It applies to most things. If you were once great, bow out before you get old, persist in doing what nature prevents you from so doing, and you continue to make yourself a fool in front of the world.
Great people should make their mark and move on. This is a lesson of life. In Guyana, history has indelibly recorded the phenomenal achievements of the Working People’s Alliance, particularly under the period of its fantastic nationalist, Walter Rodney
It simply boggles the mind to understand why those who originally founded the WPA and who are still in Guyana persist in erecting an invisible almost fictional construct named the WPA. More importantly, in trying to extend their endurance in this unreal environment, they have morphed into something that is completely unlike what they were in the glorious days of Walter Rodney.
For me, the WPA has always been a problem in my political life since I became part of it in 1974.
From its first moment of birth until I finally lost complete interest after 1992, I have always been discomforted by the personality traits of some of its core leaders.
I never interacted with most of those core leaders because of this conceptualisation, the exceptions being Walter Rodney and Moses Bhagwan. For me, those two were the leaders that appeared in my eyes as straightforward people with little if any unusual tags on their cloth.
I wrote several columns in the Stabroek News about the WPA’s peculiar leaders receiving the wrath of some of them in the process. I have always maintained that there were serious defects in the political integrity of some of the key players in the WPA. I think this contributed to the death of Rodney and Ohene Koama and the jailing of David Hinds.
At least one or two of them had intertwining relationships within the corridors of Burnham. The same obtains with the Jagdeo presidency. I have written about this before and it need not detain us here.
Sunday morning I was part of the ongoing interview programme on channel 9, “Walter Rodney Groundings” hosted by Dion Abrahams, a person I knew in our youthful days with the WPA. The panelists also included Dr. David Hinds and Christopher Ram and concluded that the PPP Government had destroyed what Walter sought to build.
We all agreed that the present situation in Guyana constitutes a dictatorship worse than when Burnham ruled. That evening I went to the official ceremony to rededicate the monument to Walter at the junction of Hadfield and John Streets. I ran into trouble and it was déjà vu all over again. My memory went back to the seventies and the questions I had of those core leaders.
These aging WPA revolutionaries had lost touch with their previous praxis. They are unable to see the political betrayal involved in celebrating the life of Rodney and the role of Sam Hinds as Prime Minister for 18 years. The aging revolutionaries are either aging deceivers or are bordering on senility.
It is political madness to address a crowd of people, lecture them on what Rodney stood for and what he fought against, ask people to continue the legacy of Rodney and have in front of you the presence of a power-wielder who is part of the machinery you claim Walter would have fought against. They say that the WPA has ‘nuff’ intellectuals among its ranks. Well let them explain to the Guyanese society how you can justify a power-wielder being on a platform that celebrates the role of Rodney in fighting against dictatorship and that power-wielder is part of a dictatorship. Let these ‘nuff’ intellectuals explain this anomaly within a theoretical framework.
After my interjection, Ms. Vanda Radzik let the audience know I was wrong because Walter would have talked with even his enemies and he did just that with people whom he knew had a hit list to kill his colleagues. This is highly questionable. And it is a caricature of Walter’s politics. But what do you expect from aging revolutionaries.
Then chairman of the proceedings, Desmond Trotman apologised to PM Hinds on behalf of the WPA for my remarks. That was uncalled for but what do you expect from aging revolutionaries. I loved the way Rupert and PM Hinds were closely walking around the place. Poor Walter Rodney! Some friends you had!

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