DR. CHEDDI JAGAN delighted in the young Walter Rodney because they both shared similar visions, and both were men of peace who cared enough about their fellow human beings not to pursue the credo that the end justifies the means: so it was highly impossible for Rodney to sanction, as Dr. Jagan never did, a civil war in Guyana, because both abhorred the idea of Guyanese killing fellow Guyanese, even if it meant their reaching their ultimate goal of restoring democracy to Guyana; so the assertion that the WPA was amassing arms for the forcible removal of the Burnham administration is an opportunistic strategy to validate the PNC and the assassination of Walter Rodney for personal gain, and to justify alliance with the persons and the party practically everyone is convinced were complicit with and thus equally culpable of Rodney’s murder.
Rodney was a Pan-Africanist, not an African supremacist, because while he was empathetic to the socio-political and economic demographics of his ancestral forebears, like Dr. Cheddi Jagan, he was foremost a humanist and thus a human rights activist extraordinaire. So it was, as aforementioned, highly impossible for him to encourage or be part of any plan to unleash violence in a country where he was fighting to restore the human rights of the citizens; and he was too sensitive and brilliant not to envisage the destruction to life and property civil war brings to any country.
This was highlighted in a speech Dr. Rodney delivered in Georgetown in 1976, where he said, inter alia: “… we have had too much of this foolishness of race. No ordinary Afro-Guyanese, no ordinary Indo-Guyanese can today afford to be misled by the myth of race. Time and time again it has been our undoing.
“Does it have anything to do with race that the cost of living far outstrips the increase in wages? Does it have anything to do with race that there are no goods in the shops? Does it have anything to do with race when the original lack of democracy as exemplified in the national elections is reproduced at the level of local government elections? Does it have anything to do with race when the bauxite workers cannot elect their own union leadership? Does it have anything to do with race when, day after day, whether one is Indian or African, without the appropriate party credentials, one either gets no employment, loses one’s employment, or is subject to lack of promotion?
“It is clear that we must get beyond that red herring and recognise that it is intended to divide, that it is not intended in the interest of the common African and Indian people in this country. It is time that we understand that those in power are still attempting to maintain us in that mentality – maintain us captive in that mentality where we are afraid to act or we act injudiciously because we believe that our racial interests are at stake.
“Surely we have to transcend the racial problems.  Surely we have to find ways and means of ensuring that there is racial justice in this society.  But it certainly will not be done by a handful of so-called Black men monopolising the power, squeezing the life out of all sections of the working class, and turning around and expecting that they will manipulate an issue such as the Arnold Rampersaud affair and get the support of ordinary black people because we will say, ‘After all; is only an Indian. We could hang him. No sweat.’
“Because, as I said before, you start with one thing, you end with another. The system doesn’t stop at racial discrimination. Because it is a system of class oppression, it only camouflages its class nature under a racial cover. And in the end, it will move against anyone, irrespective of colour. In the end, they will move even against their own. Because, don’t believe if you are a member of that party today, that you will be protected tomorrow from the injustices. Because when a monster grows, it grows out of control. It eats up even those who created the monster. And it’s time that our people understood that.”
Dr. Cheddi Jagan always believed in shared governance; and that is why, for the general good, he always offered ‘critical support’ to the despised, unconstitutional PNC administration whenever there was need for collaborative efforts to guard the nation’s interests.
He mourned all his life the destruction of the unity of the Guyanese people by Machiavellian, opportunistic forces – in and out of then British Guiana; and in the emergence of the leadership of the like-minded Walter Rodney he recognized the inherent promise of bridging the divides that inhibits the Guyanese nation from achieving its full potential for progress and prosperity in a peaceful country. The bonds that were forming between the veteran and emerging leaders of the working class, Drs. Cheddi Jagan and Walter Rodney, threatened the despots who always use the race card to divide the people and retain power, so Rodney was ruthlessly eliminated from the equation; and they did so by winning his trust in the notorious Gregory Smith, who strategised his destruction.
Today he is once more being destroyed by someone he trusted: So what is the correlation between 30 pieces of silver and a seat in Parliament? Jesus was betrayed for 30 pieces of silver and Rodney is being betrayed for a seat in Parliament.