I have never betrayed Walter Rodney

Jan 29, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

---

Kaieteur News – Once again, I stress to people in this country, it is important to reply to depraved fictionalisation of political events from racist people and people with an agenda that is devoid of morality, the values that hold Guyana together and respect for rights and freedoms.
In offering a factual rebuttal to these people, those words become valuable when the next generation searches for the meaning of things in Guyana that went by 50 years ago. In life, people will always seek the meaning of events. Those of us, who have the capacity to explain these occurrences, owe it to subsequent generation to offer our interpretations.
Tacuma Ogunseye has accused me of attacking the politics of Walter Rodney in yesterday’s edition of this newspaper. In all seriousness, this has to be the biggest political joke since the three counties were united into British Guiana. The material available out there is enormous for anyone to acquire that the closest comrades of Rodney from the 1970s who are alive today have betrayed every strand of the foundations on which Rodney’s activism stands on.
That material is obtainable because people have documented that betrayal. This column here is yet another contribution to the annals of exposure of what the comrades of Rodney have become. I hope this brief excursion into the politics of this betrayal is yet another example of explaining the meaning of events in Guyana.
One of the major political controversies of contemporary times in Guyana surrounds the allegations Rodney’s wife made against Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine. The latter had reported to the government that the Rodney family was no longer interested in a commission of inquiry into Walter’s assassination. For more on this controversy please see the explanations of Mr. Nandlall, the Attorney General; Mr. Ravi Dev, and others through a Google search. Footnote – in Parliament, Dr. Roopnaraine voted against the release of the report into Walter’s death.
There may not be a Guyanese Indian anywhere in this world who would doubt that Mr. Ogunseye is not racist. Yet this man accuses me of attacking Rodney’s politics. From 2002, when the mayhem in Buxton started, Ogunseye was a supporter of the gunmen. For a condemnation of Ogunseye’s role in Buxton, see the book by Eusi Kwayana titled, “The Morning After.” In describing his role in Buxton at the time, Ogunseye sued me and this newspaper for libel which I won.
Read that very book for Kwayana’s take on the politics of Ronald Waddell. I regard Waddell as one of the most unadulterated racists this country produced. Several African Guyanese in the WPA that were close to Walter endorsed Waddell’s politics including one who developed a partnership with him.
In 2010, all the surviving members from Walter’s days in the 1970s supported a formal alliance with the PNC headed at the time by a former army official, David Granger. Mr. Granger was in the hierarchy of the army at the time when Burnham and Rodney were locked in violent confrontation.
In 2015, these surviving WPA mandarins went into government with the PNC. At the time when Dr. Clive Thomas was chairman of GuySuCo, 7,000 sugar workers, with one swipe of the pen, were made unemployed thus affecting 42,000 family members and relatives.
Then came the 2020 election in which the comrades of Rodney underwent an incredible transformation – from fighting for free and fair elections from 1973 to 1992, the “heroes” from the days of the seventies became in 2020 barefaced supporters of rigged elections that were far nastier than any fraudulent poll in Guyanese history.
In September 2020, two APNU leaders, of which the WPA was a part of, incited post-election violence in Region 5 in which Indians were attacked, beaten and robbed, with houses and cars set on fire. No surviving comrade of Walter condemned their action. Yet, Mr. Ogunseye says that I have attacked the politics of Rodney.
During the election rigging, Mr. Desmond Trotman, in response to Christopher Ram published a long letter justifying the positions he took as a GECOM commissioner. At the end of the letter he remarked that if Rodney was alive, Rodney would have endorsed his action.
There isn’t a decent soul in this world today that would see the people who once stood tall with Rodney in any positive light. I was influenced by people like Rodney. He sacrificed his life so young people like me at the time could be free. I have always written positively about him since I became a columnist 33 years ago. It doesn’t mean that scholars should not undertake revisionist research into his politics. I have done that for Jagan and Burnham and will do that for Rodney.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

---

---