OUR nation’s healing springs out of the wellspring of national justice, and President Donald Ramotar holds the golden chalice of our history for showing the courage, good conscience and humane decency to convene the Rodney Commission to deliver national justice to the Guyanese nation.Justice in the suspected political assassination of Guyana’s brilliant international scholar, Dr Walter Rodney, eluded our nation for 34 years. After decades of socio-economic and human rights violations during the 1970s and 1980s, the Government of Guyana owes the Guyanese people answers for what happened to us, for why we plunged to such a low point that a bomb could explode in our capital city, causing the instant demise of one of the greatest Guyanese the world has known, just because this leader sought justice and a free and fair playing field for the Guyanese people.

PROFOUND SHAME
Dr Rodney cared only that the Guyanese people know justice in choosing their Government, through free and fair elections. He dedicated his life to that cause. He lived and breathed for justice to the poor, disenfranchised and marginalised, choosing to be an activist in Africa, the Caribbean and his homeland.

We stand head bowed in profound shame that we denied his family and our nation the justice we sought with strenuous effort and abysmal frustration after his demise, waiting 34 years to convene this historic Presidential Commission.
What kind of a people are we, to have sat on this cold case for so long? How could we face ourselves with any authentic truth with this nasty stain on our conscience? How could we, for 34 years, so harden our hearts and stifle our good conscience?
A few people pushed and fought for justice for Dr Rodney. These included the late journalist, Sharief Khan; the late Editor-in-Chief of the Stabroek News, David de Caires; late President Dr Cheddi Jagan; former President Bharrat Jagdeo; some leaders of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA); and Dr Rodney’s family, including his widow, Dr Patricia Rodney, his brother Donald Rodney, and his children.
The Rodney family migrated after the tragedy of that night of June 13, 1980, and we gave up on them as a nation, with many people among us preferring we just forgot about the Rodney case. After President Ramotar showed good conscience and courage to open the case to deliver national justice to our nation, those who oppose such truths being revealed started a campaign to align the integrity of the Commission.
The Guyanese nation should, with one accord and one voice, rise up to applaud President Ramotar for his courage and good conscience, in the face of heavy opposition, to cause the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry to conduct its probe.
Detractors work with strenuous effort to stop the Commission from carrying out its mandate, and to prevent the findings from being publicized. Since President Ramotar announced the Commission’s convening, the voices opposing it started a loud, vociferous cry against its operation.
First, critics claimed the Commission was a political ploy of the ruling party, and now critics claim the Commission’s testimonies and evidence of witnesses would “incite” tensions during this elections season.

CRITICISM AND OPPOSITION
The criticisms and opposition to the Commission aim at one thing: to stop the probe, to halt testimonies that show up damning evidence that the regime of the People’s National Congress (PNC) operated a dictatorship that harassed and violated the basic human rights of the Guyanese people, and that may have caused Dr Rodney’s demise, and they seek to stop evidence from being documented.
One may sympathise with the detractors who slam the Commission and malign the professional integrity of the noble Commissioners. Who wants their nasty violations of our nation’s human rights to be exposed and documented as historical record? These folks would of course want the Commission to cease its work, or to keep its testimonies and evidences from the public domain.
In Chairman Sir Richard Cheltenham of Barbados, Jacqueline Samuel-Brown of Jamaica, and Seenauth Jairam of Trinidad and Tobago, President Ramotar and his hard-working Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall, appointed Caribbean jurists of outstanding accomplishments, with great experience and learned contribution to the Caribbean’s justice system. Head of the Commission Secretariat, Hugh Denbow, acts with impartial and professional ethics in his work.
But instead of allowing the Commission to carry on its work with peace and calm, in its quest to deliver President Ramotar’s mandate for national justice to the Guyanese people, and for psychological closure to the family of Dr Rodney, the critics and detractors seem determined to try to derail and disrupt the easy flow of the process.
The Commission generated heated debate and mixed reaction when it commenced last year June, with critics claiming its work looks at 34 years ago, and this is “long ago”. But this is not just the righting of a historical wrong. Rather, it’s the healing of the Guyanese soul, the closing of a deep psychological scar on the Guyanese psyche, and the vindication of the role of Dr Rodney and the movement he led, the Working People’s Alliance (WPA), in the cause of national justice for the Guyanese nation.
Nowhere in the Commission’s work do we see the ruling People’s Progressive Party (PPP) extolled or praised, even though this party and its leaders, including current Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee, and Dr Cheddi Jagan, fought with patriotic dedication alongside Dr Rodney.
Nowhere in the Commission’s work do we see politics at play, as most of the testimonies name the PNC, with the current Opposition alliance, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) never mentioned. So it’s rather disingenuous for critics of the Commission to claim this is politics at play.

MAN OF THE HOUR
President Ramotar stands as the man of the hour, the hero of our nation, for his Presidency delivering this vital healing of the nation’s soul. In the Commission, the President shows his leadership and character, in the face of strenuous criticism, to accomplish what no other Guyanese leader before has delivered to our nation.
The Commission acts in the Presidential cause of national justice, and those who claim that it’s a political ploy to incite tensions in the society resort to devious and deceitful means to hamper and delay the Commission’s noble cause.
The Guyanese nation would applaud President Ramotar for his historical initiative to convene the Commission, in him taking leadership in healing of our national soul and the delivering of national justice to the Guyanese people. In that, we show our maturity, good conscience and heart of care as a progressive 21st century nation, a people who would leave no stone unturned in healing ourselves of our historical maladies, even if it means exposing those who prefer their dark sinister plots disappearing in the dustbin of unexamined history.
In providing the platform for this professional, impartial examination of the darkest period of our history – a time when Dr Rodney suffered the worst fate possible for a human being; when a United States fugitive and murder suspect led a cult under protection of the government of the day; when Guyana became notorious for the ugly Jonestown massacre; when Guyanese suffered untold human rights violations, even in availability of basic food; when creepy and disturbing political plots saw State agencies spying on Guyanese citizens – in that act, President Ramotar gave us back our sense of national dignity, acted with outstanding statesmanship to erase our greatest national shame, and positioned us among the world’s nations that practise good conscience and national justice.