Dear Editor,
On June 13th in Guyana and around the world the assassination of Walter Rodney is commemorated. His life, work and struggle is reflected on and evaluated and reevaluated. This year is no different. It is within this context that I pen this brief res-ponse to Mr. Ralph Ramkarran’s “The Conversation Tree” column captioned, `Had Rodney lived, Guyana would not have faced the current dilemma.’ My preference is to insert “likely” after “would” in the caption.
This letter is restricted to issues related to Rodney and not the other matters that were dealt with by Ramkarran in his column. For some time I have found it difficult to agree with commentary in The Conversation Tree, which happened to be one of my favourite columns. I concurred with most of Ramkarran’s analysis of Walter Rodney and his role in national politics.
Acknowledging this fact is important in light of the present degenerated political culture that has developed in Guyana, with its emphasis on expounding differences in a way that blindsides the other rather than a meeting of minds.
Having said the above, I disagree with Ramkarran’s opinion “Rodney would not have been able to prevent the electoral demolition of the WPA at the 1992 elections, which were dominated by the PPP and PNC, by ethnic voting patterns.” This conclusion could only be valid if it is assumed that by 1992 Rodney and the WPA had failed to achieve the removal of the Burnham regime by popular revolt. For the sake of argument, if Rodney was alive and politically active in 1992 with WPA going against PPP/PNC there was no certainty of WPA’s victory, but I am doubtful that we would have been demolished as Ramkarran indicates. But all this is pointless speculation which can never be proven one way or the other.
There is also another point of departure between me and Ramkarran, this is his contention that PPP and the WPA had reached an agreement, “on the basic principles of shared governance”. It would be more correct to say that both parties were in agreement that the country needs “shared executive power” but differed on the details and the path forward.
The above does not take away in any significant way from my concurrence with most of Mr. Ralph Ramkarran’s analysis in his column. As writers supportive and critical of Walter Rodney and the WPA’s activism, share their thoughts to commemorate the 40th anniversary of his assassination the information will be of great benefit to the younger generation Guyanese who did not have the opportunity to witness the struggle of that important period.
Yours faithfully,
Tacuma Ogunseye
