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Life of Rodney COI extended

Jul 16, 2015 News

The public hearings of the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the death of historian and former Working People’s Alliance (WPA) co-founder, Dr. Walter Rodney, are slated to reconvene within 12 days.
The Commission comprising Sir Richard Cheltenham, as Chairman; Queens Counsel (QC) Jaqueline Samuels-Brown and Senior Counsel (SC) Seenath Jairam will reconvene public hearings on Monday July 27 and Tuesday, July 28.
A notice was circulated in the local newspapers yesterday also confirmed that the sessions will be starting at 09:30 hours at the Supreme Court Library Building, Georgetown High Court, Avenue of the Republic and Charlotte Street, Georgetown.
It did not state whether this would be the last session. The announcement comes at a time when there were talks of the inquiry being brought to a close.
Rodney, then 38, was killed when a bomb exploded in the car in which he was sitting. The inquiry was set up after years of questions and speculations as to what led to Dr. Rodney’s death. Thus far, the inquiry has seen many travelling from far and wide to offer their testimony into the incident which occurred over three decades ago.
It was initially scheduled to last four months, following its commencement last year April. Since then, the previous People’s Progressive Party/Civic-led administration had extended the inquiry’s life on several occasions.
Last April, Members of the Tenth Parliament were unanimous in their approval of $112M to fund the work of the Commission, an allocation that was listed under the Office of the President’s $2.2B expenditure estimates in the 2014 Budget.
Back in February, 2014, former President Donald Ramotar had said that the Rodney Commission will not come cheap and that he knew for a fact that the money would be well spent. Subsequently, the former cabinet Secretary, Dr. Roger Luncheon, had stated that the commission spends about $20M a month.
What the PPP leaders did not say, however, was that of the millions spent, a journalist bagged just about $16M for the coverage of the sessions while the Commissioners had earned up even more.
The government has since changed and the now David Granger-led administration stated that they will be looking to bring it to a close. Shortly after taking up office, Granger had said, “The Rodney Commission has not performed adequately. It has allowed a lot of hearsay evidence; a lot of time and money has been wasted and I would like to bring it to a conclusion as early as possible.”
Granger noted that the inquiry had gone well past its deadline, costing Guyanese millions of dollars. He emphasised that the Commission of Inquiry had already received several extensions and “money is being wasted.”
“I did not say I would stop it. I would like to bring it to a conclusion as early as possible. I don’t envisage any more extensions,” the new Head of State had said.
Despite Granger’s pronouncement, the notice yesterday spoke to an extended life. “All persons wishing to testify on these and subsequent hearing dates are asked to submit statements of their intended testimony in writing to the Commission,” the notice said.

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