By Cary Fraser
(Cary Fraser teaches race in American history and Caribbean history at the Pennsylvania State University. He is also a regular contributor to the Trinidad and Tobago Review.)
Horatio: He waxes desperate with imagination.
Marcellus: Let’s follow. ‘Tis not fit thus to obey him.
Horatio: Have after. To what issue will this come?
Marcellus: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Horatio: Heaven will direct it.
Marcellus: Nay, let’s follow him. [Exeunt.]
Hamlet Act 1, scene 4, 87–91 ( by William Shakespeare)
The recent statement attributed to Prime Minister Sam Hinds that he had been advised that the Rodney family no longer wished to pursue an investigation into Walter Rodney’s assassination has opened a Pandora’s box. Hinds’ statement was made in the National Assembly in response to a question from Sheila Holder, a member of the Alliance for Change. Hinds however asserted that the government was prepared to conduct such an investigation even though he was not sure what purpose would be served some 28 years later. On behalf of the Rodney family, Dr. Patricia Rodney has issued a statement calling for a retraction of “a blatant and unfortunate misrepresentation of the truth” and reasserting that the Rodney family “has always maintained that it requires and supports an impartial enquiry conducted by an international team and not one that is solely selected and managed by the Guyanese government.”
The unfortunate statement by Hinds in the National Assembly has done little to improve the credibility of a PPP-administration that has been tarnished by its consistent failure to create a viable structure for governing a fractured society since its return to office following the 1992 elections. Instead, the PPP has proven itself to be unable to police the boundaries between criminal and political violence, and the most recent violent episodes in Lusignan and Bartica have illustrated the vacuum of power that exists at the level of the national government. It is a vacuum that has been the product of the PPP’s historic inability to distinguish between the interests of the party and the interests of the state and that has rendered the state vulnerable to further acts of destabilization. The Ronald Gajraj affair and the murder of Minister Satyadeow Sawh were clear evidence that the PPP’s internal politics had compromised the party’s role in governing the country and that, left unattended, this problem would mushroom at all levels. The exchange between Prime Minister Sam Hinds and the AFC’s Sheila Holder is a clear indication that the PPP is unable to exercise the authority to defend the principle that the state exists to secure the rights of its citizens.
The passage of the resolution to investigate Walter Rodney’s death by the National Assembly in 2005 should have set in motion an effort to establish a Commission of Enquiry into Rodney’s death. The delay has created the impression that the PPP is reluctant to undertake the task, raising the very important question about what the PPP knows about Rodney’s assassination, and when did the party leadership know it. Prime Minister Hinds is from the Civic group that emerged as a junior partner in the PPP governments since 1992 and his statement suggests that he is not in a position to speak with authority about PPP policy. Perhaps that is the reason for his blunder in claiming that the Rodney family was reluctant to proceed with the investigation. It would have been useful for Mr. Hinds to have asked Dr. Luncheon to issue a statement, given the latter’s long-standing and privileged relationship with the PPP and its leadership for more than two decades.
Mr. Hinds’ comments are also problematic in light of the 2007 publication of Gregory Smith’s posthumous “memoir” of his relationship with Walter Rodney, in which Smith admitted a relationship with Rodney and his collaboration with the Working People’s Alliance leader in creating the device that killed Rodney. Since Smith was a member of the Guyana Defence Force at the time, it is incumbent upon the Guyana government to investigate Smith’s motives in knowingly supplying an explosive device to a leader of an opposition party. The Commission of Enquiry should be asked to determine whether Smith acted as a free agent or as an agent of any state agency, including the Guyana Defence Force. The importance of this issue lies in the doctrine of party paramountcy that defined the operations of the People’s National Congress government from the mid-1970s. Under that doctrine, state agencies were subordinate to the ruling party and the question of culpability in the death of Rodney will determine whether Smith, the GDF, the PNC – separately, or in some form of collaboration – played a role in the death of Rodney.
The clarification of this issue is important for both the Rodney family and for the future of Guyana. For the family, an international investigation will provide them with the knowledge that Rodney’s death will be lifted above the sordid politics that has defined Guyanese life under both the PNC and the PPP governments of the last five decades. Moreover, an international investigation will provide a level of credibility that any investigation by the Guyana government is unable to offer.
For the future of the country, it will offer an opportunity for the society to reflect upon the necessary constitutional changes that will lead to an end to the executive power granted to both PNC and PPP governments under the 1980 constitution. The concentration of power at the level of the Presidency has created a tradition embraced by both the PPP and the PNC to dismiss demands for parliamentary accountability, and it has fostered the blurring of the boundaries of criminal and political violence that has increasingly defined Guyanese life. If an international investigation into Rodney’s death helps to initiate the process of constitutional reform, it will be a vindication of his life and death in search of a viable politics of inter-racial community in Guyana. It would be a fitting tribute to Rodney if the investigation could be completed by the 30th anniversary of his June 13, 1980 death.
(This is one of a series of fortnightly columns from Guy-anese in the diaspora and others with an interest in issues related to Guyana and the Caribbean)
