I will boycott the Rodney Commission of Inquiry

Mar 23, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Everything about the evolution and shape of the Walter Rodney Commission is wrong. The human rights community, the anti-dictatorship society, the independent media, independent commentators, trade unions and the opposition parties will be disappointed. As for the opposition parties, they can clearly see what is coming.
The PNC has to be crazy to participate. The inquiry will turn out to be an inquisition against the PNC. If critical minds like David Granger (he is a bright academic) cannot see what the intentions were behind the shape from the beginning, then he opens for questioning his leadership qualities.
Before APNU or the PNC decides on giving evidence, I will urge the PNC leader to consult far and wide. The list includes past stalwarts like Haslyn Parris and people like Aubrey Norton, Vincent Alexander etc.
First, the Guyana Government consulted the Rodney family only. This was suspect from the beginning. A commission into the death of a national hero should not be determined only by what the family wants. Rodney was a national figure who belonged to a national movement.
Just as the ANC was consulted on the affairs of Mandela, the Government should have dialogued with the WPA on the nature of the commission. It did not.
It was stated by the Government in the press that the Rodney family objected to the WPA being consulted. The family has not denied this to date. If so, the family was unreasonable and unfair. Rodney was great, but the WPA made him greater.
Too many WPA personnel sacrificed so much for Walter and gave so much to Walter, for the Rodney family to think that because they are Walter’s family, the WPA should not have been asked for its input.
The Rodney family was wrong to have taken that course. This columnist knows of the many mistakes the WPA has made since the PPP came to power that would have exasperated the Rodney family, but that does not mean that the family should refuse to see the bigger picture.
The WPA takes the high ground on many occasions forgetting that many of its personnel have been, and are in bed with the PPP. I recall on one occasion on Walter’s death anniversary, I took the microphone to protest the continued invitation of Sam Hinds to the yearly event, only to be denounced on the platform, with Vanda Radzik reserving her wrath for me.
The speaker after me (not a WPA member) denounced me and praised Jagdeo as a democrat to loud applause.
No one supported my position, only Mark Benschop, who did so publicly and for which I will always thank him. WPA high-ranking member, Stanley Humphrey of Linden, months after met me at a TUC symposium and with a smile as broad as the three great rivers of Guyana said, “Freddie, I agree with wuh yuh said about Sam Hinds.” I turned to him and said, “But Stanley I did not see or hear you clapping me.”
The two main organizers of the yearly Walter Rodney anniversary are Vanda Radzik and Jocelyn Dow.
At the time of writing, I don’t know if they still retain their contracts with the Office of the President as consultants to the LCDS. Both traveled with President Jagdeo in that capacity to Copenhagen in 2010.
The late David de Caires once told me that the best column I have ever written for his newspaper was the one on strange bedfellows in Guyanese politics ( see my article in the Stabroek News of Sunday, August 11, 1991, “All ahwe is one family or the new game of sucking up to both sides.”)
The second evolutionary fault in the birth of the commission was the nature of the Terms of Reference. It includes the intelligence operations of the Burnham presidency. That is madness and it is equal madness for the PNC to accept that propagandistic vulgarity of the commission’s work.
What will happen is that PPP officials will testify on the type of intelligence work against the opposition the Burnham presidency did in the seventies and eighties.
The PPP will coerce former PNC officials who are now indebted to them (notably the rich man with the African first and last names) to go to the hearing and testify to the so-called horrible things the Burnham presidency did to the people of Guyana, including the PPP and WPA.
The PPP will then show the world what a horrible government the PNC administration was and will tell its supporters that these are the people the WPA has joined with. Missing will be the most horrific things the PPP Government has done to this nation that make Mr. Burnham look like Mother Teresa.
In case you didn’t know, I was a critic of Burnham and he never tried to kill me.I almost lost my life three times since the PPP came to power. Maybe I have more lives than a cat.

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