The Rodney report was an opportunity for national healing

Dear Editor,

There appears to be no road to Damascus for President Granger. This Walter Rodney CoI report was a grand opportunity for national healing, political mileage, vote grabbing and trust building for a deeply mistrusted party (the PNC) and a fragile coalition government buffeted by many negatives since assuming power. But President’s Granger’s outburst on the CoI findings, seemingly divorced from reason, rationality and intellectual honesty, while hiding the report from the public, has destroyed those opportunities. The President continued the CoI even after he became President. Now he has a grave problem with it.

Baytoram Ramharack appears to have received a copy of the Walter Rodney CoI Report (‘We need a comprehensive CoI which covers the PNC and PPP years’, SN, March 1). Dr Ramharack mentions page 143 of the report which reportedly stated that “there is prima facie evidence” that senior members of the Disciplined Services “had significant roles to play in the conspiracy to kill Dr Walter Rodney and the subsequent attempt to conceal the circumstances surrounding his death.” It further concluded that “Prime Minister Burnham knew of the plan and was part of the conspiracy to assassinate Dr Rodney”. Dr Ramharack further noted President Granger was made Commander of the GDF in late 1979, just before the assassination, when it was clear that Rodney was infiltrating the officer corps. Understandably, President Granger would be condemnatory of the CoI conclusions. The problem for the President is that this CoI is the most extensive and balanced inquiry into the matter of Rodney’s death. In fact, one would be hard pressed to find a more comprehensive inquiry into any matter in this country since its Independence. For a country that desperately needs commissions of inquiry into many things and with some promised by this government such as one into extra-judicial killings, the President’s statements have now created mistrust in the viability of future commissions of inquiry as a vital tool for the public good. Talk about shooting oneself in one’s own foot.

More telling from the President’s comments is the fact that Walter Rodney still debilitates some sections of the PNC and its ability to operate tactically with respect to him. Forgetting the moral dilemma Rodney presents for all Guyanese, and Africans in particular on the issue of the morality of African leadership in this country, the President does not seem to grasp that his party (the PNC) is the most mistrusted political entity in this country, even with the corrupt PPP around. This was an opportunity to play this right to avoid deepening or opening that mistrust. The President has erred terribly in this tactical regard, particularly considering that his statements and his insistence on a cabinet review of the CoI report is going to generate problems for the AFC, which secured the majority of its support in the 2015 election from voters who are inclined to reject the President’s take on this issue, and who most likely agree with the CoI’s conclusions. Given the demographic constraints and appeal problems of the PNC, the President cannot hold power without coalition politics, and his initial drive to deepen coalition politics through national unity governance is now effectively dashed given the signals of mistrust he created with his response. The President’s tone and attitude projected unrepentance and belligerence.

That the President hammers, without providing evidence, the conclusions from the commission in which two African-Caribbean heavyweight jurists formed the majority and found an African-dominated government assassinated an African freedom fighter is troubling.

This report is vital to this country’s future to prevent the excesses of the past from returning in the future. It is critical for securing the place of the critic, maverick, dissenter and freedom fighter in a system prone to totalitarianism. It is essential for crafting the future course of responsible use of state power and for reforming the armed forces of this country. It is important to enable people to make the moral break from ethnic clannishness. Its acceptance by the state and the government, whether open or by silence, is vital in order to signal that the autocratic options open to the government will not be pursued and that the democratic awakening in May 2015 is still seen as foundational to our existence.

Sometimes the truth simply cannot be buried or washed away. There are some battles that cannot be picked and some that cannot be won. There are some that are better tactically parked or left to rot rather than resurrect. For those too young to know the Rodney affair, the President has certainly started the education process for them. Even if he embarks on a road to Damascus, it may not be enough for him to recover in a country where the young populace desperately need a Walter Rodney to emerge, and the President had the incredible fortuity of being the man who could position himself in this role and become the new Walter Rodney. He has a country quietly desperate for transformative change. He has an opposition leadership criticised by its own ethnic constituency. He has a populace ripe for reconciliation. He has two major ethnic groups without political allegiance (Amerindians and Mixed) willing to buy into real change. What does the President do at this fateful juncture? He disparages the findings of an inquiry into the death of the one man who was prepared to do what was right for and by this country and who won respect from across the ethnic spectrum. In doing so, he was denigrating the man himself.

Even if we were unsure where the President stood morally and politically, it is now clear.

Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell