Dear Editor,
To be lawful, renaming the National Archives of Guyana required an amendment in the National Assembly of the National Archives of Guyana Act. That Act established the National Archives in 1982 and there was no amendment to it in 2008 or afterwards to rename the Archives.
If there is a law that makes it mandatory to publish name-changes of things in the Official Gazette before those changes are lawful, I’m not familiar with it. But even if there was such a law, it would have made no difference in this case because the Act named the Archives in 1982 and only an amendment Act can rename it.
There is no need, however, for legislation or any other formality to treat the building housing the National Archives as being named after and dedicated to the memory of Walter Rodney and I wonder whether this is not the most sensible solution to the recent controversy on this issue.
Yours faithfully,
Kamal Ramkarran
