The drama of life’s stage, when actors truly die

By Barrington Braithwaite
COWARDS shout that artists have no place in the world of politics; trembling, they warn, “Mind your own business,” secluded in the shadows. But politics envelopes and smothers all, without discrimination. Art has, throughout the human timeline, always pronounced on politics, as I have elaborated in a past article. Drama has profoundly reflected the events that invoke themes of laughter and grief, touching our pulses and adding clarity to perceptions otherwise clouded by deceptions cast upon the mass to shield the ‘evil’ of the guilty confederation. It was not the PPP who had allegedly initiated the culture of extrajudicial killings, but they had protested when Keith Caesar of ‘Tiger Bay’ was fatally shot in the early seventies. When in power, extrajudicial killings escalated drastically, and even more so under the Jagdeo Presidency. I knew Ronald Waddell before the 1990s, but we came together as conscious grown men with the killing of ‘Jermaine Wilkinson’ in La Penitence Street Albouystown by Corporal Beresford in 1996. This would be one of many protests as the body count of young Afro-Guyanese men would rise to at least two or three a week. By 1999, the narco-backtrack business class had risen, many of them were allegedly empowered through the ‘policing groups’ and were responsible for multiple extrajudicial killings, this time with a racist bias. I was in ACDA, and with the ’Justice for Jermaine Organisation’, protested with a small group of citizens with foresight, which included the GHRA, PNC, WPA, a few Christian groups; that was about it. That period, however, was the prologue; the jail break on February 23, 2002 unleashed the contents of our Pandora’s Box.

With the jail break, Ronald Waddell entered upon a stage of shadows with a cast of characters that included several deceitful sub-plots. This play was directed by Mephistopheles and whatever other title we wish to address that intelligent force that lacks principle, humanity, compassion, and the character to understand that it lacks these very values that constitute the building blocks of anything admirable. Ronald visited me and said to me we have got to do something about what was happening. Through a mutual acquaintance, he had met Dale Moore, whom I knew when he hung around ‘Stone Love’ and had worked with the then political system in the 2001 elections, and thought best left alone.

These escapees were heavily armed, not particularly hiding from the police, and were visiting places as if they knew something no one else knew. Ronald agreed with me that these escapees were not particularly the substance that revolutionaries were shaped from. I became afraid then, because whoever took them out of prison also knew this. They were expendable, that is why they were taken out of prison to do what they had to do before being disposed of. They had to be re-oriented, had to be instilled with some conviction, the best criteria was evaluated, the fact that they were been manipulated by political powers that would use them and dispose of them, the evidence of Linden London and dozens of others, were convincing parallels. There were political accusations and drug cartel loyalties; at times, the drug cartels were not distinguishable from the political covens. Both ACDA and the PNC had become ineffective, the PPP had lacked the vision to manage the society; many were too keen themselves to embrace Faustian pacts, and were contemptuous of the non-PPP constituency. So, after the death of police officer Leon Fraser, attributed to Dale Moore, the persecuted grass roots masses adorned this group their heroes. They were confronting the thugs of the Target Squad on their own turf and winning. The real pivot on this macabre stage was the kidnap of a Cartel boss, who was held prisoner a few houses away from a senior Government politician. His rescue and the bloodletting that followed, then the revelation through this Cartel boss of another ‘Death Squad’ headed by the very senior politician, this exposure had filled the stage with the triumph of clarity beyond rumour and speculation. Now stood before all the grotesque two-headed beast, that of Roger Khan and his political alter ego.

Waddell remained to that point the voice for those who were burying their sons and daughters. Revelations would reveal that even the wise were misled, there was no Buxton conspiracy, and that he Waddell was no ‘Secret Commander of events’. He was, however, a conduit of events, speaking to the minds and arousing convictions against the common foe of the two-headed ‘beast.’ He had committed the same crime as Courtney Crum-Ewing and significant others, who were forced to flee the abysmal nature of the cult that preached the deceit of division and mindless obedience to the primitive superstitions of ‘Dem’ and ‘Abbe Dese’.

Ronald Waddell knew how the absence of education and rational thinking had damaged and destroyed many from the ‘Nigger Yard’ system of the colonial era, the deprivation of spirit and self-esteem still persisted. We had witnessed how ‘wants’ can overcome needs and cause one to lose one’s soul. Before him lay many people who had no positive spiritual and world view of self, so he warned against the businesses who supported the Phantom killer squads. But in the end it had to be someone veiled in treachery, who had befriended him, someone he would have trusted, to call him out that faithful night.

Waddell had visited me with Ras Kali only days before. He had related that certain Cartel members had told him who wanted him dead, and it was imminent, [this is knowledge that most likely is in the Roger Khan Case files]. He was invited to go stay in Buxton among other options, but to that point he was undecided, it was almost sunset so he left, the last time we would see each other, with both of us alive. The voice was silenced, so the deceptions could persist, but Ronald Waddell had done too good a job, we had witnessed an unprecedented ‘EVIL’ destroy our homeland; and even as the curtains came down, we bid our friend Rest In Peace. We conclude with the vow “A luta continua….A Vitoria e certa”

Waddell 57, was killed in January 2006. According to reports at the time, a dark-coloured car took the gunmen to the scene, where they were apparently watching Waddell’s movements from the seawall. According to reports, as soon as Waddell stepped into his car, two gunmen ran across the road and opened fire on the vehicle. They then ran back across the road, jumped into their car and sped away east along the highway.