A DAY before a parliamentary motion by the opposition PPP to force the government to hand over the report of the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry, Attorney General Basil Williams presented the report to Speaker of the House Barton Scotland.The handing- over took place in Parliament Chambers some three (3) months after the report was handed over to the government.
Opposition Chief Whip Gail Teixeira was scheduled to move the motion calling for the release of the report.
During the simple handing- over ceremony yesterday morning, the Attorney General said the President was working with a roadmap which saw him disseminating copies of the report to “interested parties.”
The copies were given to wife of the late Dr Walter Rodney, the Leader of the Opposition, Members of the coalition and all other interested parties. Williams said after the dissemination to the “interested parties,” discussions were to occur at the level of Cabinet.
Having completed all aspects of the roadmap, the Attorney General said Government now has “no difficulty in laying this report over at this time.”
Speaking with reporters after, Williams was asked whether it is a mere coincidence that government decided to hand over the report to the Speaker of the House one day before the Opposition Chief Whip moved the motion, he said, “We don’t consider that there was a delay.”
He reiterated government’s position that the findings in the report which was handed over on February 20, were “flawed.” The Attorney General said too that it must be recognised that “a lot of injustice would have been done to certain persons who would have been named during that process and really were not afforded the opportunity during the currency of the inquiry to give evidence.”
Williams spoke specifically of those who came from Cayenne and Florida to provide evidence but were not given a chance to complete. “…the way in which the inquiry was conducted led to this bizarre result and you’d notice that the inquiry was to take four months and it ended up taking two years to be exact and we couldn’t continue with it.”
The Rodney CoI cost the government over $400M and the Attorney General said the spending of such sums in the absence of contracts between the commissioners and the government was strange.
“We find that very strange that there would be such an engagement that would involve the spending of hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars” and no contracts signed.
“It goes to show as we contended from the onset that the inquiry was merely intended to go after certain people and there was no pursuit of justice,” said Williams.
Asked in his capacity as Chairman of the People’s National Congress (PNC) he could state whether that party would be challenging the findings, the Attorney General could not state with certainty.
“The report went to the central executive of the PNC and had to go to the General Council and the question of challenge hasn’t been determined by those institutions. You know the PNC has its decision- making bodies, the central executive, the general council and then the highest decision-making level, the Biennial Delegates Congress, so we haven’t dealt with that yet.”
Williams did state that the General-Secretary of the PNC will soon hold a press conference at which time the party’s response to the report would be made public.
Just after the report was handed over to the Government in February, President David Granger said the report was “badly flawed,” noting that his government intended to challenge the findings of the report and the circumstances under which the inquiry was conducted.
The CoI into the death of historian and politician Dr Walter Rodney was established in February 2014 by then President Donald Ramotar to investigate the circumstances under which Dr Rodney was killed on June 13, 1980.