Special Report on the Rodney Commission of Inquiry by Shaun Michael Samaroo

PNC government suspected WPA penetrated Police communications ‘network’

Police paranoia that the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) had “breached” the Police communications network may have caused the People’s National Congress (PNC) Government’s to devise a sinister plot to assassinate Dr Walter Rodney.

Evidence at the Commission unravel the dark, mysterious, sinister secrets that the PNC State machinery, involving the Joint Intelligence Command, Guyana Defence Force (GDF), Guyana Police Force and Government departments such as the Ministry of National Development, contrived and conspired, to nullify the WPA’s widespread civil revolt against the PNC Government. The PNC Government rigged national elections, banned basic food items, denied freedom of the press, restricted freedom of movement and assembly, and harassed and intimidated political opponents with violence and threats, and practised paramountcy of the Party, witnesses have testified at the Commission. The WPA fought to end this horribly dark period of Guyana’s history, with Dr Rodney the intellectual leader of the civil revolt.

Testimony yesterday at the historic, ground-breaking Presidential Commission probing Dr Rodney’s assassination exposed the dark drama around a cat and mouse game involving the WPA and the Police Force in the period

1978 to 1980, with the Police seizing communications devices from the WPA, and working on the theory that the populist political movement was intercepting and listening in on Police electronic communications.
Trenton Roach retired from the Guyana Police Force in 2003, after working for 28 years at the Police Communications Branch at Police headquarters, Eve Leary, since 1975.
In 1988 he testified at the Coroner’s Inquest into the bomb blast cold case death of Dr Walter Rodney, giving expert evidence in relation to electronic devices.
Roach yesterday stepped into the witness box at the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry to testify concerning the circumstances and conditions under which Dr Rodney died in the brutal bomb explosion on Friday, June 13, 1980.
Dr Rodney died instantly after a bomb, disguised as a communications device, exploded in his lap as he sat in a car outside the Camp Street jail in Georgetown.

Roach’s testimony follows detailed technical testimony by Nirmal Rohit Kanhai this week that a remote trigger caused the bomb, disguised as a communications device, to explode in Dr Rodney’s lap.
This week saw the distinguished Presidential Commission zero in on the technical aspects of the bomb that exploded on that fateful night. While the the PNC Government had insisted Dr Rodney accidentally triggered the bomb in his own hands, thus causing his own death, suspicions all across the world over the past 34 years focused on the draconian PNC dictatorship Government as the main suspect in the conspiracy, plotting and execution of Dr Rodney’s political assassination.
Evidence at the Commission unravel the dark, mysterious, sinister secrets that the PNC State machinery, involving the Joint Intelligence Command, Guyana Defence Force (GDF), Guyana Police Force and Government departments such as the Ministry of National Development and Mobilisation, contrived and conspired, to nullify the WPA’s widespread civil revolt against the PNC Government. The PNC Government rigged national elections, banned basic food items, denied freedom of the press, restricted freedom of movement and assembly, and harassed and intimidated political opponents with violence and threats, and practised paramountcy of the Party, witnesses have testified at the Commission. The WPA fought to end this horribly dark period of Guyana’s history, with Dr Rodney the intellectual leader of the civil revolt.
Evidence yesterday exposed the WPA as focusing on acquiring communication devices to intercept and listen in on PNC Government communications, but the PNC Government may have interpreted this as a grave threat to its hold on political power, and thus devised a deadly scheme to assassinate its leader, Dr Rodney.
Roach said he knows of two occasions when Police seized walkie-talkies from the WPA, including toy communication devices, one time after the detention of Dr Rodney.
The WPA suffered several questionable deaths in the period under probe at the Commission, including that of Father Darke, a Journalist at the Catholic Standard newspaper, which was then operating as an underground news organ that defied the PNC Government’s ban on free expression.
Roach was one of two specialist electronic technicians at the Police Force Communications Branch at the time, and testified that he examined communications devices found at the home of Gregory Smith on June 14, 1980, the day after the walkie-talkie, disguised as a bomb, exploded in Dr Rodney’s car, assassinating this thorn in the PNC’s draconian hold on power.
The former senior police officer said he himself felt sympathy for the cause of the WPA, and in fact attended WPA meetings against the PNC Government, and only stopped after he joined the Force and got warnings that “it was noted” that he was attending WPA meetings.
He said police officers sympathetic to the WPA maintained a careful watch because they were fearful of losing their jobs. Police officers operated under the doctrine of paramountcy of the PNC over the State, and so he himself obeyed orders, maintained loyalty to the PNC State, and bowed to the wishes of PNC Government’s Head of State Forbes Burnham, to be referred to as “Comrade Leader.”
Yet, he thought of Dr Rodney as “Brother Walter Rodney”, his heart in full empathy with the WPA and its charismatic leader, even as he maintained strict loyalty to the Comrade Leader and the PNC’s draconian hold over Police officers, GDF soldiers and other State employees.
Roach’s testimony yesterday was the first time the Commission heard from someone in the cusp of the Police Force’s hierarchy when Dr Rodney was assassinated. This provided the Commission a different perspective into that historic bomb blast that shattered the history of Guyana and the Commonwealth Caribbean into the darkest era of this nation.
The Commission heard from Roach how the WPA situation in Guyana appeared to the Police Force and the PNC, and what emerged was that the Police Force loyally carried out orders of the PNC Government to ensure the WPA could not succeed in its goal of ending the PNC Government’s dictatorial hold on political power.
He testified that he examined several communications devices that Police got from Gregory Smith’s house in Charlestown the day after Dr Rodney was killed. Smith is the main suspect in executing the plot to assassinate Dr Rodney.
Testimony show that Smith was a GDF soldier who acted as an Intelligence officer for the Joint Intelligence Command of the Police Force and the GDF, and doubled as an agent for the WPA, with direct liaison with Dr Rodney.
Dr Rodney and his brother Donald Rodney seemed to have trusted Smith to supply them with communications devices, particularly walkie-talkies, in the party’s quest to monitor the PNC Government’s communications. However, testimony is starting to reveal that the PNC State machinery conspired to disguise a bomb as a communications device and gave it to Dr Rodney, and have it explode, assassinating him, as happened on Friday, June 13, 1980.
The fascinating drama and intriguing political plot unfold at the Commission, as researchers, counsels and the Commission’s Secretariat work with dogged determination to unearth the truth of this immense and historic cold case.
The Commission is probing the period 1978 to 1980, and so far testimonies expose an atmosphere of severe political paranoia and control of the society by a PNC Government bent on ruling Guyana with iron clad control over the national economy, State organs, and political power.