HOME Affairs Minister Clement Rohee said President Donald Ramotar’s decision to launch a Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the death of historian-politician Dr Walter Rodney is in keeping with the Administration’s desire to bring closure to the matter.

Furthermore, he said the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) is looking to bring closure particularly to the family of Dr Rodney. Rodney’s wife,  according to Rohee, is very interested in having this matter brought to its finality.
Rodney was murdered in an elaborate assassination plot 33 years ago, and government has over the years noted the inconclusive results of past inquiries into his death.
Rohee was yesterday addressing a PPP press briefing at Freedom House on Robb Street. With him was the party’s Executive Secretary Zulfikar Mustapha who said the PPP is pleased with the announcement of the CoI.

ORDER OF EXCELLENCE
Mustapha recalled how former President Dr Cheddi Jagan, in 1993, had bestowed the country’s highest national award on  Rodney, the Order of Excellence.
Secretary to the Cabinet, Dr Roger Luncheon, had announced the president’s decision to establish the CoI at his last post-Cabinet press briefing at the Office of the President.
Rodney has left important lessons for Guyanese and the world from his struggles for the working class. Rodney was a bitter critic of the former People’s National Congress (PNC) government led by the late President Forbes Burnham and died when a remote-controlled bomb exploded in his lap while he was sitting in his car with his brother Donald.
A former army sergeant, Gregory Smith, was identified as the army’s electronics expert who gave Rodney the bomb disguised as a ‘walkie talkie’ which exploded as Rodney was testing the device on Smith’s specific instructions. Smith had fled to French Guiana where he remained until he died several years ago.
Rodney was also a critic of capitalism and argued for a socialist development template.
When the Jamaican government, led by Prime Minister Hugh Shearer, banned him in October 1968 from ever returning to the country because of his advocacy for the working poor in that country, riots broke out, eventually claiming the lives of several people and causing millions of dollars in damage.
These riots, which started on October 16, 1968, are now known as the ‘Rodney Riots’, and they triggered an increase in political awareness across the Caribbean.
When Rodney returned to Guyana, he was supposed to take a position as a professor at the University of Guyana but the then PNC government blocked his appointment. He became increasingly active in politics, forming the WPA against the government.
Rodney was survived by his wife, Patricia, and three children. In 2004, Rodney’s widow and children donated his papers to the Robert L. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Centre.
Since 2004, an annual ‘Walter Rodney Symposium’ has been held on March 23 (Rodney’s birthday) at the centre under the sponsorship of the Library and the Political Science Department of Clark Atlanta University, and under the patronage of the Rodney family.