WHAT an interesting position, as it relates to the testimony of former Chief-of-Staff of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF), retired Major General Norman McLean, concerning the death of the former leader of the Working Peoples Alliance (WPA), internationally renowned scholar, Dr Walter Rodney, who died by an assassin’s bomb.

So many questions arose out of the former Army Chief-of-Staff’s testimony that one can only wonder as to the validity of his answers. It leads one to almost arrive at the conclusion as to why the former Peoples National Congress government had refused the numerous urgings to hold an inquiry into Rodney’s death.
Given McLean’s portfolio, as co-ordinator of the Joint Services that made him privy to all intelligence reports, then it is very difficult to understand his several answers of “no”, in responding to questions such as the most well known story of the aftermath of this dastardly act, this being the reported removal of the alleged assassin, Gregory Smith, by way of GDF air transport. If, as he claimed, he never knew of such, then: Was he indeed Army Chief? Or, is it a case of convenient amnesia?
Given the pivotal position of the GDF, as the national army, it is inevitable that it would have been very concerned and troubled by the tense political environment of that time, especially as it relates to what could be described as a gathering social rebellion. And with his confession that there was the presence of Working People’s Alliance literature in the hands of his soldiers, this would have been all the more worrying, since such would have meant influence of a sort, deemed hostile by the State and government, that would have infiltrated the army.
Therefore, issues of the undermining of the Armed Forces must have arisen and been uppermost in his mind, and the likelihood of troops being asked to suppress a possible social explosion. There is no Army, anywhere, that would have been unconcerned by such a gathering storm.
These considerations would have had to be a given for any Armed Forces Chief, inclusive of McClean; thus, given the outright hostility of the Burnham regime to the WPA, especially with the menacing threat of “Steel-for-steel!” and “Write your wills!” it is not difficult to put the pieces together, in what, in accordance with evidence given at the Commission’s hearings, is unravelling a conspiracy with many tentacles.
One can only hope that Mr. McLean understands that his testimony, not yet completed, OBSERVER believes, will be judged by future generations.