Pontifications on the role of the WPA

Oct 13, 2016 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Well well Peeping Tom seems to know where it’s at. What a fine job he has done in reminding and enlightening everyone that it was the WPA that suffered the heaviest causalities in the struggle for “Peoples Power no Dictator” against the Burnham regime after taking the fight to the street: “unleashed the full force of the police state on the WPA” I am surely familiar with most of what he said except that Rodney had asked the U.S.A to grant his family asylum in event of his death. Peeping Tom’s writing was a bitter reminder to those who were involved, no wonder some folks are so upset with the WPA being in the coalition.
Personally I say like Kahlil Gibran: “life tarries not backwards with yesterdays sorrow…” What’s past is past and we have to forge on using the grim past as a guide so we don’t repeat it. However, it remains a hurting pity that the PNC/R, the main entity and government of that dreadful period remain so unrepentant as if they had done nothing wrong ever! And this is what old school folks are haunted by.
Anyway please allow me to add my two-bits about the WPA being spent coming out from the Freddie Kissoon column of the Kaieteur News. “WPA: A kind of dismissive analysis.” The question about the relevance/irrelevance of the WPA will sooner rather than later be finally settled by them, as I will not dismiss the WPA until, by their actions/inactions, they have virtually dismissed themselves. As is common knowledge to all politicians, no movement worth its salt and wants to maintain relevance can afford to remain running on the spot. Relevance involves changing and transforming with the times, and I don’t mean it in that simplistic, dumb and blind way of doing as they do – just going with the tide. No! For that could also lead to that organisation’s undoing.
I’m thinking here about having a sound awareness, a dialectical and pragmatic approach and line of action in conformity within the scheme of things. Of keeping abreast and in harmony with events and movements of daily occurrences affecting the lives of the people, being grounded with the masses, as the once maxim of the WPA says: “you have to see with the eyes of the people, hear with the ears of the people and speak with the voice of the people”. This in effect is saying that one must vicariously possess the pulse of the people. Such a policy is labelled by some as a people’s movement.
Editor, I can level with Freddie Kissoon. He has been in town long enough, knows where it’s at and has earned the right to speak critically about the WPA of which he himself was a part of. One does not have to agree with all he says but you have got to give it to him. I am also in agreement with him as he frankly pointed out, that party is indeed languid, lacking vitality and much less spirited. One has to be in denial not to admit that the WPA is not even a shadow of its former self. Indeed there was a time when the WPA was riding commandingly high in support and garnering serious attention. For whatever reason the momentum was not kept, have experienced a low point which it never half as much recovered from.
But no one can deny that the WPA’s role and sphere of influence within our political landscape was not only somewhat dominant but crucial and vital, which some have grudgingly accepted as the proper thing to do, for various reasons, while deep down they sneer and spew contempt. Kindly bear my indulgence in saying that whether or not the WPA ever ascend to the seat of government (a man once said to me that is a distant call from the wilderness, an extremely rare probability, and which with the present state of affairs I have to agree) any way whether this happens or not the WPA of the Walter Rodney era has already etched an indelible landmark in the history of Guyana’s struggle for unfettered freedom and democracy.
Some who run their mouths, I’m not denying them their democratic freedom of expression, but they cannot be careless with what they say: The WPA has educated and enlightened the masses, emboldened them to stand firm in the face of terror, in defense of civil rights for bread and justice, they have made men out of sheep, have lit a candle in the dark, have even made some women stronger than their men folks. For all these and more they have suffered, members and supporters alike put out of a livelihood, were made to run, families destroyed, killed and what more, as the Peeper so well described. How dare they who never marched in the ranks of WPA – a once people’s force – now summon the courage to speak so bold and brazen in condemnation of WPA.
Frank Fyffe
Editor’s note; because of length, we will have to conclude this missive in another edition

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