I do not share these lofty ideals about Roopnaraine and the WPA

Apr 11, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I will try my best not to let my frustration lead me to use acerbic adjectives to describe an unruly, inelegant and dishonest interpretation of my analysis of Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine by leading WPA diaspora member, Mr. Rohit Kanhai.
Kanhai writes often on WPA matters in a way that deceives readers. He has lived all his adult life outside of Guyana and does not have that historical closeness to the seventies in Guyana that he leads one to think he has.
I have been associated with the WPA very closely in the seventies and there was no Rohit Kanhai in the midst of the WPA that I know of. I returned to Guyana in 1984 and there was no Rohit Kanhai around the WPA in any pronounced way. Kanhai’s latest missive (KN, April 9) which is supposed to be an interpretation of my column, “Roopnaraine is the most honest activist the WPA produced,” (March 29) is a cauldron of boiling dishonesty. The rest of this essay is a demonstration of Kanhai’s fictional constructs.
First, here are the words of Roopnaraine in the book, “Walter Rodney: A promise of Revolution” in which he was describing the secret trip by Rodney who was on bail, therefore couldn’t leave Guyana to go to Zimbabwe while President Burnham was there to participate and address an international gathering on African liberation struggle.
He observed; “It was kept to a very tight group that knew about it. Obviously Pat, and Bros. Eusi and myself and that was it.”
It is pellucid that after Rodney and Kwayana, Roopnaraine was the guardian of WPA’s secret actions. Later in the book, Roopnaraine stated, “We were at the time attempting to put ourselves in a state of readiness to make an assault on the state. It is no secret, we were accumulating weapons. We were accumulating equipment of various kinds.”
Rohit Kanhai in his letter last Monday wrote; ‘More fundamentally, the WPA never depended on the use of arms to remove the Burnham dictatorship, so the statement (of accumulating arms) is very inaccurate if taken out of context.”
I say in anger, who the hell is Kanhai to dispute a statement that came from perhaps the second or third person in charge of WPA activities after Walter Rodney? What more proof would anyone need to ascertain the dishonesty of Kanhai? It is obvious the man has not read the book and didn’t even see it as proper to do so before be penned his response to me.
Secondly, Kanhai distorted the context of my panegyric of Roopnaraine. I never wrote on Roopnaraine’s political life. I acknowledged his deep, analytical mind provided knowledge when that mind analyzed politics. Kanhai proclaims himself to be the embodiment of Marxism. I would advise him that the greatest exponent of Marxist philosophers were professors who never were involved in politics or implemented Marxism in their lives. They simply interpreted philosophy so the world could know about it. I saw Roopnaraine in that context.
I did not embrace Roopnaraine’s political life because it was not a reflection of the kind of activism I yearned for though I admit he contributed to the erosion and dissolution of authoritarian governance in Guyana, for which all Guyanese should be grateful. Kanhai has a right to eulogize the activism of Roopnaraine but he should not transfer that proclivity to me.
Thirdly, when in that column I used the question; “Why would WPA leaders heap scorn upon Roopnaraine?” it was in the context of the immediate reaction from Rodney’s wife and other WPA leaders after Roopnaraine admitted that the WPA wanted to attack the Burnhamite state. I specifically stated that Roopnaraine was being honest and fulfilling his obligation to history so why would the WPA leaders heap scorn on him for that.
Kanhai deliberately obfuscates my contextual outlay and has me in his letter as questioning why WPA leaders should attack Roopnaraine in general and at the present time. I must say in all honesty, I find Rohit Kanhai to be a dishonest polemicist and this is my first and last reply to him.
Finally, I know more of the post 1990 nature of the remnants of WPA leaders than Kanhai who has been absent from Guyana the past forty years. If WPA had core values then with the exception of Eusi Kwayana, David Hinds and Moses Bhagwan, all those WPA leaders who are alive today have embraced political values that are reactionary, ethnocentric, politically depraved and downright backward.
They have morphed into something that has caused Walter Rodney to turn in his grave. They include Rupert Roopnaraine.

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