Guyanese know full well who “assassinated” Walter Rodney

Jan 22, 2021 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

I refer to an Open Letter (SN, January 21, 2021) to the Chancellor “Court Cases of Walter Rodney and Donald Rodney in dire need of justice”. Like the signatories I am heartened by this desire to bring to the fore the matter of Dr. Walter Rodney’s killing, otherwise styled as “mis-adventure” by those in the PNC government of the day.
One of the first acts of the APNU+AFC coalition government led by David Granger was to bring the Rodney Commission of Inquiry to a quick end. Despite the ignoble attempt to hide this momentous inquiry to find real closure, the Guyanese people were/are not fooled. Guyanese know full well who “assassinated” Walter Rodney.
While I welcome this Open Letter, I hold certain reservation vis-à-vis some of the cosigners who will be nameless at this time. But I refer to a few individuals who ostensibly portray themselves as WPA people, or Rodneyites.
The WPA signatories (and sympathizers) should be ashamed to append their names to this letter. At the end of the day the WPA people, lock, stock and barrel, betrayed Walter Rodney and the party of WPA. The WPA without coercion became part of the APNU+AFC Coalition, arm in arm, lying in bed with the party presumed to be the perpetrator of the vicious and barbaric demise of Walter Rodney.
Now alas, it seems that some of his comrades lacked his sound ideological/philosophical/political grounding! They turned out to be double-dealers who betrayed the cause of a truly great Guyanese, a truly great man whose life was snuffed away in the prime of his life.
Walter Rodney had so much to offer. He was Guyana’s saviour, the messiah for true change based on nonpartisan, non-racial, grassroot activism – whose humanity was rooted in research, etiology and truth, formulated in a way that made the complex very simple for the masses. For this, he was murdered ignominiously.
Then the advent of these professors and activists speaking on/for his behalf! It is easy for me to say why they betrayed the cause. I know almost all of them personally. Then, I believed they were genuinely good people, and I really respected them.
Martin Carter spoke of ‘food’, ‘mouth’, ‘eat’. These individuals were/are not the ordinary poor. They did not need dirtied, tainted food to live. Then again, food comes in different forms – gravy or soup usually savoured for its energizing and sustaining longevity. Yes, the soup was flowing, was tasty, and difficult to resist – for those with feeble minds and duplicitous disposition. They became opportunists, or in Guyana’s parlance big time soup-drinkers.
Do I sound nasty and angry? You bet I am. I am mad like hell. Sorry, there are no nice euphemisms in my vocabulary for now. These individuals, who shall remain nameless but who know who they are, and who are now attempting to sanitize their images, should recuse themselves from this Open Letter. They turned out to be bedfellows with perpetrators of Walter Rodney’s murder. During the five months of election rigging they were/are guilty of being part of the rigging process – by their individual and collective silence – despite being footnotes. Rohit Kanhai did perfunctorily address the question of election fraud. (KN, Mar. 09, 2020).
I do not want to distract from the laudable objectives of the other honourable signatories. I do apologize for any awkwardness and unease. And while I am heartened, I am also distraught and disappointed.

Sincerely,
Dr. G. Girdhari

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