ON the sixth of this month, Mrs. Patricia Rodney, widow of the assassinated historian and political activist, Dr. Walter Rodney, released a statement to the regional and international media expressing deep disappointment over an earlier announcement of the Guyana Government’s intention to discontinue the Commission of Inquiry (COI) into the circumstances of her husband’s death in a bomb blast in Georgetown in June 1980.
Mrs. Rodney’s press statement, as reported by the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) and various sections of the regional print and electronic media, including the ‘Guyana Times’, was prompted by an official announcement that due to rising cost and unavailability of funds, the Government of President David Granger would have to bring an end to the COI.
According to the published CMC report, “newly appointed Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister, Basil Williams, said that the COI, which is chaired by Barbadian jurist, Sir Richard Cheltenham, has so far cost taxpayers Gy$325 million”.
But in her brief media statement, Mrs. Rodney said that the “Rodney family believe that the Commission of Inquiry is critical to determine the truth as to what happened and to contribute to healing a society which has lived under the shadow of this terrible period in history. The Commission’s work is too important to abandon without completing its original mandate…”