Eusi Kwayana denies that WPA helped Gregory Smith to leave Guyana

May 29, 2014 News

– describes Smith’s book as “fiction to escape guilt”

By Latoya Giles

Veteran political activist Eusi Kwayana yesterday sought to discredit a book written by the late Gregory Smith calling it a fiction to escape guilt. Smith, who is the author of “Assassination Cry of a Failed Revolution” according to several sources including the Guyana Police Force, is the man responsible for the death of Dr. Walter Rodney.
Kwayana told the commission yesterday that the book was merely a “fiction of guilt on the mind of a ghost writer”. Kwayana said that the book had several major discrepancies which could not be supported.
The activist denied that the Working People’s Alliance aided in Smith’s departure out of Guyana. “The WPA didn’t provide Smith with a passport or money to aid in his departure from Guyana,” Kwayana told the commission. He however suggested that it was either the police or the GDF that assisted Smith.
He also rubbished the assertion in Smith’s book that Rodney was going to cause damage to the Georgetown Prison. According to Kwayana this could not be so because Rodney’s car was nowhere near the prison. He said that, secondly, there were armed officers at the prison, and they were placed there a year before the actual explosion.
Kwayana said that he knew nothing about former Guyana Defence Force (GDF) electronics expert Sergeant Gregory Smith, before his name was mentioned in a statement by Donald Rodney.
He told the commission that Smith’s name came out in the statement as being the person who handed Rodney package which contained a “walkie talkie”. He said that during initial investigations by the Working People’s Alliance, the GDF had denied that Smith was ever part of the organization.
However he said they made way when a woman named Pamela Beharry visited the WPA office to give a statement vouching that Smith was indeed a member of the GDF. Kwayana explained that a statement was taken from the woman at a building on King Street.
He said that the woman told him that she had lived near Smith and that she and his wife were friends. The woman, he said, had told them that she had followed the woman to visit Smith while he was stationed at the Marine Wing of the GDF.
Kwayana also reiterated what other witnesses had said about political violence that had been meted out to the WPA in the 1970s and early 1980s. He said that it included the breaking up of meetings and the seizure of vehicles by unidentified persons in the full presence of the police. “The police never intervened in these matters,” he said.
Kwayana was also grilled about his political life in the 1970’s and 1980’s. According to Kwayana he became a political person in 1947 when former President Dr. Cheddi Jagan was getting into the legislative council. Kwayana said that he has been active since then.
He told the commission that he has been considered as someone with “controversy and often regarded as public danger”. Kwayana said that it was in the 1960s when he changed his name.
“My original name was Sydney King and I changed it to Eusi Kwayana…which meant Black Man of Guyana”. He went on to explain the main reason behind the name change which he said was based on his view that Africans need a cultural resolution to link them to the “motherland”.
According to Kwayana, he supported Jagan because of the active role he played in politics which was making a remarkable move. He said that he surmised that someone from the “other side” should get on board.
Later on Kwayana said that former President Forbes Burnham returned to Guyana from England and assumed the Chairmanship for the PPP.
He said that in 1956, he got in a controversy with the PPP. Kwayana said that he later joined the People’s National Congress and became editor of the New Nation. He said that he worked with the PNC with the aim of them becoming a multi ethnic party.
He described that feature as the essence of Guyana’s problems.
Kwayana told the commission that many thought that Rodney was an inspiration. He said that the notion of “Human Rights” was cut off. Kwayana explained that many even thought that Rodney was the cementing factor to get groups to work together.