The showpiece called the Rodney Commission

Mar 29, 2015 Features / Columnists, My Column

---

The Walter Rodney Commission of inquiry was long in coming. I remember that the first time that this issue came up Rupert Roopnaraine was a Member of Parliament. There was an issue over a word in the motion, “assassination” in relation to Rodney’s death. The opposition objected and in the end that word was removed.
But somehow, I knew that there was going to be a drive to blame Forbes Burnham because over the years since June 13, 1980, there was talk that Burnham had used an agent to murder Walter Rodney. There was no love lost between them, although one would have expected that the old school tie would have been a common bond.
When Rodney died I distinctly recall that Burnham said that he wanted a thorough examination and that the chips should fall where they may. Those for sure were not the words of a guilty person. I remember Burnham, at Government’s expense, bringing in forensic experts from overseas.
I never saw the report, but recently when the commission began to sit I learnt that the report was in the hands of the commissioners. I am still surprised that there has been no publication of that report, or even a mention. Instead there has been a parade of people who wanted to blame Burnham who is now long dead.
Given the nature of the politics in Guyana, I expected to see this issue become a political talking point. Ever since, the PPP has been blaming Burnham for all the ills in the society and even today, nearly thirty years after his death, his name is still being talked about from the political platform. There is no mention of Desmond Hoyte who succeeded Burnham and changed those things that the People’s Progressive Party found objectionable.
By ignoring Hoyte, the PPP was trying to take credit for everything post-Burnham and they would include those things that Hoyte did, like lifting the import restrictions, freeing up the economy and creating organisations that are now being used as cash cows by the ruling party. One of them is the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL)
And so we had the commission with people lying through their teeth. The Commissioners seemed to like what they were hearing, so they gave these people the latitude to say anything to link Burnham to Rodney’s death.
The parade was almost unending, with some of them returning ad infinitum to add whatever their minds conjured up. But there were people who were close to Rodney and who were not afraid to tell their side of the story.
There was Jomo Yearwood who left his home in Cayenne to come to Guyana to testify to Rodney being fascinated by detonators and actually transporting them with assistance from his brother, Donald. The Commissioners did not want to hear that, so Jomo was put out of the hotel in which he stayed and left to fend for himself after he had given his evidence in chief. No attempt was made to reimburse him the money he spent to get here or to return home before he could be cross examined. In fact, I doubt that he would ever get a chance to say to people exactly what he knew and why he left his native Guyana.
Then there was Gregory Smith, the man accused of planting a bomb on Walter Rodney and killing him. Evidence surfaced that Rodney and Smith were friends, that Smith joined Rodney’s party, that he was embraced and was used extensively by Rodney and his party.
Evidence came out that when Rodney died the party, Working People’s Alliance, decided to use the death as a means of blaming Burnham. How else can one explain the comment that “some good will come out of this?”
Things did not end there. The WPA is now being fingered in Smith’s disappearance from Guyana. We also hear that during the tenure of this very government, Smith was given a passport in another name, that he visited Guyana after Rodney’s death, albeit before this government came into office, and of course, that the very WPA travelled to Suriname to meet with people who had associated with Rodney up to the time of his death.
Jomo testified that when he called the WPA to say that Gregory Smith was in Cayenne, the party hierarchy told him to forget it, that Smith was in another country. He named the people who said as much to him.
Rodney’s sister repeated a similar story as told to her by her brother. Surely she could not collaborate with Jomo to present such a story and in such detail. There is a woman who will tell a similar story, but the Commission is not trying to get her, although she is here in Guyana. She was the woman who identified Smith.
It was my classmate, Dr Roger Luncheon, who made me realize the direction in which the Commission was heading. At a press conference he announced that the death was being laid squarely at Burnham’s feet. When I asked him about evidence to the contrary, he described them as aberrations. How he could so conclude only tells me one thing—that at this time the aim is to blame Burnham for everything conceivable, even to the point of ignoring Burnham’s successor, because he too is an aberration.
I understand that the Commission also has tons of evidence that is pointing them in another direction, but that will not come to light because the aim is not to get to the truth. The fact is that Donald Rodney knows what happened, but he is not talking, because he does not want to change the image that the people who care have of his brother.
And the Commissioners also know this. The Chairman had attended a rally where he lambasted Burnham soon after Rodney died and here he is, presiding over a forum that would allow him to justify his 1980 ranting and ravings.
For me, whichever way the chips come down will not place or remove a crumb from anyone’s table. There will be the same feel as most Black people now have about those people who were executed in 1823 for demanding their freedom. They don’t even know the martyrs’ names and they don’t care.
It is the same with the young people of East Indian ancestry when people talk about the Enmore martyrs or about those killed at Rose Hall Canje at the turn of the last century, in 1913. They, like the rest of the society, simply want their leaders to make their lives better. History can wait for those who care.
By the time the elections of May 2015 are over, Rodney would be forgotten until the next elections when Burnham, for some strange reason, always reappears. He was with the PPP at Babu Jaan and he will be with the party all through the campaign, only to be discarded until some time in the future.

---

---