Dear Editor,
I refer to a letter by former president Donald Ramotar published in Stabroek News on November 20, 2019. He was responding to my letter published on November 16, 2019. In part of my letter, I tried to show that President Granger was, from my understanding, in a difficult situation as the Rodney COI continued its deliberations. Mr. Ramotar, who recently spent about four years as President of Guyana and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, has found my reasoning faulty. He gave information, which came to him one way or the other, about individuals in the coalition cabinet. I do not know what part of my letter strikes him as an apology for a political party.
He can fairly say that I tried to explain President Granger’s difficulty. I do not as a political activist exclude human considerations. Further, my real or perceived migration is my own business. When Mr. Ramotar along with his colleagues migrated around 1976 into “Critical Support” for the PNC, I regarded it as their business and carried on my work. His attempt at mentorship is noted but unwelcome. It is unwelcome because my would-be mentor as President of Guyana abused his powers by denying the National Assembly the right to debate a no confidence motion against his government.
President Ramotar notes that his was the first presidency that included the aggrieved family in its considerations. This is commendable and he will no doubt be remembered for doing this. In light of his recounting the incidents leading up to the creation of the Walter Rodney COI, I must recall the spirit that to all appearances informed the PPP’s meandering towards the need for the commission.
Older observers will recall that the first PPP executive president after the much vaunted “return to democracy” had famously and publicly declared “what will an inquiry do for Walter Rodney?” Young Shaka Rodney had visited Guyana and interrupted business as usual with his fast and vigil in the face of the silence of the most famous trumpeters of solidarity in the hemisphere. Mr. Ramotar will forgive me for thinking, and he is free to correct me, that the mindset of the PPP’s leadership on its achieving political power was explained in the words of its maximum leader. To its credit, the groundswell of interest generated by the Rodney family, human rights forces, the church and the party of which Rodney was a non-maximum co-leader brought the PPP to the state of mind making it possible to answer its founder leader’s question.
If Mr. Ramotar understands my statement to mean that his creation of the COI was purely political, then I may have expressed myself badly. I grant that he had a genuine interest in the inquiry, but also that he saw partisan advantage in the moment of its creation. Old men often do not express themselves with the clarity of youth and we do not often take into account the new meanings that words acquire as they are employed in various situations. I rebuked the former president for not consulting political parties in a parliament of which the president forms a part. I did not impose on him the duty of reaching consensus with other parties. Consultation in this case would reflect a political culture. In any case, the legal responsibility for the content of the terms of reference is the president’s .
In my letter, I reasoned that the issue of compensation and redress could not be absent from the president’s mind. I made this assumption because one year previously, the same president created terms of reference for a commission investigating fatalities due to state violence during the Linden mass protest and because the issue of compensation was correctly included in those terms of reference. Am I right in assuming that it was the same president, the same Attorney General and the same fatal result? In any case, the Linden precedent did not seem relevant to the president and the Attorney General in 2013. I am sure that if the factor of compensation and redress had flashed across the minds at work, the commission would have been asked to determine whether they were relevant in the light of their findings. This is how the possibility of compensation was presented in the Linden terms of reference.
In President Ramotar’s description of the actions of the WPA and its members, he gave a new and significant twist to what Dr Roopnaraine has been reported as saying about the “accumulation of arms” by the WPA. This time, Mr. Ramotar , with all his genuine concern for the aggrieved family revised the narrative to a form that names the martyred victim as a culprit. If his introduction of this name happened in error or absence of mind or even if it is a Freudian slip, I think in fairness to all he should account for the change he has introduced.
I have responded to a letter by the PPP’s former Chief Whip Ms. Gail Teixeira. In that response I forgot to recall that in a very troubled period of national anxiety, she was the only PPP MP to distance herself from the drug lords. I now commend her for taking that stand. Her name comes up in this letter because she had attempted to move a motion to send the report of the Rodney COI to a Select Committee of National Assembly. If as President Ramotar is now saying the idea of redress and compensation came to him or was put to him in 2015, as confirmed by the then Attorney General, Mr. Nandlall, then he had a chance to recover lost ground. When a report of a commission is tabled in the National Assembly any member is free to table a motion relevant to the inquiry or its recommendations. It was still not too late for any member of parliament including those from the PPP, PNC AFC or WPA to move a motion in one of a variety of forms to introduce the idea of redress and compensation in light of the precedent set by the Linden COI.
I have noted Attorney General Anil Nandlall’s letter in the November 25 edition of the Stabroek News. It is refreshing and encouraging that both the president and the Attorney General of the period in question have at last represented the reservations of Rodney’s widow, Dr. Patricia Rodney, fairly. What PPP leaders were saying as the process was being launched was that Mrs. Rodney had asked that specifically the PNC and WPA must have nothing to do with the commission. Two of the leaders have now said that she wanted no political party to be involved as she herself testified at the hearings in 2014. I remember well that after she had answered Mr. Basil Williams’ question under cross examination, an answer which exposed the PPP’s false communication to the Guyanese public, Mr. Williams paused on his feet and said, “Thank you Mrs. Rodney.” Yet, the PNC did not overtly denounce the PPP for creating a false impression but allowed the damage done to remain unattended.
Finally, I did not say that the use of the phrase “intellectual author” was improper. My point was that the framers of the terms of reference seem satisfied with the flaunting of fine phrases while neglecting issues of real substance such as redress for which there was a recent precedence and the effect of State behaviour on the administration of justice. I add with some trepidation that it is a pity that a commission of such eminence did not venture beyond the specific confines of the TOR into essential issues established by the weight of such testimony as they found to be valid.
Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana
