Who was the Big Stick?

Nov 30, 2019 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

This government behaves as if the public is dumb and would swallow their hollow and contrived excuses. People are much smarter and savvier than our ruling politicians assume.
The government says there is no disrespect for Walter Rodney. This is their way of saying that replacing an elegant wooden sign engraved with the name “Walter Rodney Archives” was not intended as a slight against the late historian.
So what could have motivated the removal of that beautiful piece of artwork which indicated the name of the archives and replacing it with a new sign which would have cost at least one hundred thousand dollars?
It should have been obvious to the government by now that this was a penny wise and pound foolish decision – an economically unwise decision. Someone had to have made that decision and the government is not keen on saying who it is and whether that person is a politician or a bureaucrat.
Either way it was costly mistake, financial and political. Yet, the government will not reveal who was the mastermind behind the signage change and whether that person will be surcharged for incurring an unnecessary cost to the treasury – the difference between the cost of erecting the new signboard and the cost of having to gazette the name change.
No one is yet to produce the authority which requires having to gazette a name change. They continue to peddle this nonsense about this having to be done.
What are the legal implications of the failure to gazette the name change? Does it alter the legal standing of the institution? The Ministry of Finance has continued to make allocations in its capital programme to the institution, under the heading National Archives.
If a court action was filed against the Walter Rodney Archives would the court strike it out on the basis that no such institution exists? Not likely at all!
If the decision to change the signage was an administrative one, is the government not concerned that it was not consulted on this issue or that it was financially costly decision. But if it was a political decision from a ‘big stick’, then it smacks of not only disrespect for Walter Rodney but also contempt. So who was the ‘big stick’ involved and what was that person’s motivation?
No local bureaucrat is going to remove the signage bearing the name Walter Rodney and replace it with another signboard without the consent of the political directorate. Bureaucrats are well aware of the implications of them doing something like that without approval from the higher up the political chain.
The decision to remove the signboard bearing the name of Walter Rodney could only therefore have been ordered by a political person, one with clout and influence. And as for the motivation, it can have wider implications than merely erasing the memory of Rodney.
There are political forces at work seeking to erase aspects of national history and to cleanse institutions of any reference to persons connected to parties which were once or still are in opposition to the PNCR. The removal of the signage bearing the name Walter Rodney may have been the first salvo in this campaign of historical revisionism.
There are forces at work seeking to remove vestiges of the nation’s colonial history. The statue of Queen Victoria was recently splashed with red paint in front of the Victoria Law Courts which still bear her name. Voices have been vociferous calling for the statue to be removed from its present location. The bugle has also been sounded for a name change for the village of Victoria.
This is just a prelude, a warm-up, to the launching of much larger agenda: the erasing of aspects of Guyana’s history. The ultimate objective though is not erasure of the long dead Regents but of a selected number of dead heroes – Walter Rodney and Dr. Cheddi Jagan. Remember the attempt to repossess Red House!

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