Nearly 40 years after the death of Walter Rodney, his widow Pat Rodney, is again calling on government to make public the report from the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) done on his June 13, 1980 death and to provide the public with a truthful account of his demise.
During a presentation at a Guyana SPEAKS event on Sunday, 27th October 2019 in London, Pat Rodney lamented the fact that three years after the report was submitted to the APNU+AFC government it has not been officially released.
“What has been distressing for me is that very decent people have remained silent and that is how we come to the position we are in,” she noted, adding that there must be strong resistance to those who would attach themselves to Rodney’s legacy in order to reap narrow political dividends in the present that have nothing to do with healing, reconciliation and social and economic transformation.
Pat Rodney’s remarks will be particularly uncomfortable for members of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) who are currently in a coalition government with the PNCR, the same party that the CoI found was involved in the assassination of the historian. WPA members currently in government and aligned with the government have been accused by commentators of selling out the legacy of Walter Rodney, one of the key figures behind the formation of the party.
Pat Rodney stressed that not only must the report be made public but that the recommendation made by the CoI on documentation and the proper storage of records
should be implemented.
“Where is the report? Why are they hiding it from people?” she asked.
This newspaper has previously reported that the Walter Rodney CoI report was submitted to the National Assembly in May 2016 but there is no record of it having been laid in the House.
Attorney General Basil Williams in the presence of Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan presented the document to the Speaker, Dr. Barton Scotland one day before a planned opposition motion calling for the report to be tabled.
At the time Dr. Scotland said that having received the report he would lay it in Parliament. He however did not indicate when.
During the presentation on October 27 titled Walter Rodney’s legacy: Past, Present and Future, the widow also called for a truthful account of her husband’s death to be told to the public and for her family to be paid reparations for the loss they suffered.
The 77-year-old additionally requested that her husband’s work including his children’s books be made accessible to Guyanese students and leaders.
“It is sad that on the continent [Africa] every person has read How Europe Underdeveloped Africa but it is not available in Guyana,” she lamented.
Further, Rodney called for changes to be made to her husband’s death certificate to show that he was not unemployed but rather a “historian/politician” at the time of his death and that he was murdered. The certificate currently states that Rodney died either by accident or misadventure.
A visibly upset Pat Rodney told the audience that because of the stated cause of death, “misadventure”, her family lost not just their breadwinner but also his life insurance policy.
Also affected was her brother in law Donald Rodney who was convicted for possession of explosives without lawful authority. He appealed this conviction earlier this year.
Pat Rodney has called for the conviction to be overturned and for his criminal record to be expunged.
The CoI had been set up in 2014 by then President Donald Ramotar to determine, as far as possible, who or what was responsible for the explosion that killed Walter Rodney on June 13, 1980. It concluded that Rodney was the victim of a state-organised assassination and this could only have been possible with the knowledge of then PNC Prime Minister Forbes Burnham.
The three-person inquiry, also found that the late soldier Gregory Smith carried out the killing and was then spirited out of the country to French Guiana in an elaborate operation spearheaded by the Guyana Police Force and the Guyana Defence Force.
