London conference on Rodney snobs WPA betrayers

Nov 13, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – The Centre for African Studies at Cambridge University together with the newly established Walter Rodney Programme @ Pluto Educational Trust has commenced an annual Walter Rodney conference.
The first one was held online last Wednesday, November 11, 2020 due to the pandemic and featured a number of international scholars headlined by a Guyanese historian who is a professor at Cambridge University, Dr. Richard Drayton, son of famous Guyanese academic, Harold Drayton who was one of the organizers in the establishment of the University of Guyana in 1963. International law specialist, Melinda Janki, also addressed the event. The event opened with an address by the wife of Walter Rodney on behalf of the Walter Rodney foundation.
I was informed that the organizers were firm on their decision to avoid any invitation to the WPA remnants in Guyana and their close associates in the diaspora. The world is a global village. The scholars in this world who know about Walter Rodney’s legacy are not stupid people. They know about the way Rodney’s wife feels about the WPA. They know how his brother, Donald, who almost lost when Rodney was assassinated, feels about Rodney’s once close comrades.
The people who organized that conference last week are no fools. They know what has been going on in Guyana because they know Rodney’s party, the WPA came to power in 2015. They were aware of the neo-liberal economic policies of the government of Guyana headed by two top army officers who had to know about Burnham’s violent intentions toward Rodney – deputy heads of the army, David Granger and chief of military intelligence, Joseph Harmon.
There can be no question that if you are a Rodneyite scholar and an admirer of Rodney and want to preserve his legacy then you will obviously follow the news about Rodney’s party, the WPA and his country, Guyana. Rodneyite scholars around the world have knowledge about what went on with the Granger regime.
They know Dr. Clive Thomas was chairman of GuySuCo when thousands of sugar workers were laid off without the required legal payment that resulted in their union taking the government to court. They must be familiar with the pseudo-revolutionary credentials of Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine when it was revealed in the Stabroek News’ letter pages by one of the WPA seniors, Tacuma Ogunseye that Dr. Roopnaraine told an executive meeting of the WPA that as a Minister he cannot discuss government’s business with the WPA, the very party that he was representing in the Cabinet.
He repeated that assertion in an informal meeting with three top WPA officials – Dr. David Hinds, Keith Branch and Dr. Allisa Trotz. Surely, those who worked with Rodney and supported the WPA were in mortal shock when that information came out, information that Dr. Hinds, Branch and Dr. Trotz kept secret and Rodney’s followers only knew because Ogunseye published the information.
Dr. Hinds has written a letter denying that the two of us discussed the action of President Granger raising his voice at Dr. Thomas when the PNC and WPA leadership met to discuss the removal of Dr. Roopnaraine as Education Minister. That took place and I cling to that fact tenaciously. Dr. Hinds is still to admit to Guyanese what Dr. Roopnaraine told him, Branch and Dr. Trotz in Dr. Roopnaraine’s office.
Let’s return to why not one of the remnants of the WPA in and out of Guyana was invited to the Rodney conference last Wednesday. Do you think these people do not know about five months of election rigging in which these WPA remnants openly displayed racist and a depraved political culture that made Rodney turned in his grave? The chief racist was Dr. Hinds. Do you think they do not know about the barefaced support for rigging in six letters Eusi Kwayana wrote?
Do you think they do not know that Desmond Trotman who is the manager of Rodney House, the head office of the WPA (a dilapidated building that City Council ought to demolish) wrote a long epistle in the newspapers in which he noted that his actions in GECOM as a PNC commissioner would find acceptance by Rodney and others in the WPA and he named Dr. Thomas, Dr. Maurice Odle, Moses Bhagwan, Dr. Nigel Westmaas, among others. In actuality what this betrayer was telling the world was that the WPA was in support of rigged elections.
Finally, you think the Rodneyite scholars around the world do not know that the WPA pulled out of the APNU arrangement only after they were denied a parliamentary seat after the 2020 election and that the person they nominated for a seat to represent WPA, Tabita Sarabo-Halley, jumped ship and joined the PNC. These WPA remnants betrayed a truly great Guyanese liberator.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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