Dear Editor,
THE Working Peoples Alliance Overseas Associates (WPAOA) welcomes the comprehensive statement issued on Friday, April 15, 2016 by the Working Peoples Alliance (WPA) in Guyana regarding the report of the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry.We are encouraged that, in its statement, the WPA recognised the importance of the inquiry to the process of national reconciliation which should unfold in the society.

The WPA is the second major political party to express opinion on the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry (WRCOI).

Earlier in the week, one of the main coalition partners in the APNU+AFC coalition government, the AFC, issued a call to President Granger for the report of the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry to be sent to the Rodney family, and for it to be released to the public.

We have been reliably informed that contact was made with the family, and the report is apparently on the way to them. We are glad that the Government is now doing the morally correct thing by sending the report to the family of Walter Rodney. There can be neither reason nor explanation for the delay in sending the report to the family of Walter Rodney.

Now that the parties have spoken and the report has apparently been sent to the family, we expect the President to follow through with his most recent pronouncement on this matter — to lay the report before Parliament and release the report to the public.

It is incumbent on the President to immediately make arrangements for the report to be sent as professional courtesy to all the lawyers who participated in the inquiry, to announce the date when the report would be laid before Parliament, and to release the report to the public.

These are important and necessary steps. As the WPA statement outlined, “the inquiry fortifies the moral base for intensified investigations,” which must be carried out by the new administration into the “unexplained and under-investigated killing spree allegedly masterminded by elements of the security forces and in the ruling political directorate in the last two decades.”

Yours sincerely,
MOSES BHAGWAN
Coordinator WPAOA