I CAN’T wait for June 13 to come. On that day, I will do my column on the 43rd assassination anniversary of Walter Rodney. I am eager for three reasons: one is what the Rodney family will write.

The family of Rodney has disappeared completely from the radar. From the time Rodney was murdered in 1980 to June 2023, the Rodney family has not pronounced or remarked on anything done in Guyana.

If you examine the list of endangerments in Guyana from 1980, it is voluminous. Here is a brief sample. The 1985 election-rigging, surpassed only by the March 2020 electoral insanity; the almost aborted 1992 poll and subsequent attack on commercial Georgetown; the period of “mo fyaah/slo fyaah” which followed the 1997 election; the Buxton mayhem 2002- 2006; the rejection of the Carter formula by PNC, WPA and AFC to select a GECOM chairperson; the refusal by the PNC, WPA and AFC to acknowledge a no-confidence vote in 2018; the horrible five-month period of electoral fraud in 2020 which almost saw the return of “permanent power,” and the violent attacks on Indian people in Cotton Tree in the aftermath of the March 2020 election-rigging.

The Rodney family has not even issued a one-line statement on the above situations. Then out of the blue, in 2022, Mrs Rodney and her son Shaka, added their signatures to a long public letter by the usual suspects (TUS) requesting President Ali to reject a visit by President Bolsonaro.

Mrs. Rodney and her son denounced the visit on the reason that President Bolsonaro practises discrimination against Afro-Brazilians.

So, suddenly after 41 years of silence, the Rodney family found its collective voice to denounce racism in Brazil, but in their own homeland, they have been silent on the violence Indian people endured in 1992, 1997, from 2002 to 2006 in Buxton and Cotton Tree in 2020.

Sounds convenient to me, a strategy with which Eusi Kwayana, aka, Sydney King is quite familiar; which brings me to the second reason why I am impatiently awaiting June 13.
I would have lost lots of money if I had bet on Kwayana giving his take after the public dissemination of the report into the 2020 election.

I honestly thought that after the report, Guyana would have heard from the former Sydney King because the report described a conspiracy to steal the national election in ways never before seen in this country. It makes for incredible reading, and I would have bet anyone that Kwayana would have offered his two cents.

It didn’t happen. Where was Sydney? Was he ill? Was he in Timbuktu? We will never know, but Guyana woke up one morning two weeks ago to read the grammar of Sydney. And, as expected, Sydney’s hypocrisy and double standards rained down.

Sydney treated readers to a description of the need to save the Guyana Press Association from the tentacles of the PPP. For a man who publicly wrote in the newspapers that he could not comment on any aspect of the election drama in 2020 because it would not be wise to do so from abroad, he has written on more than a dozen occasions on things that have occurred in this land.

Obviously, this man doesn’t care about his legacy which like his comrades – Clive Thomas, Rupert Roopnaraine and Moses Bhagwan — has been destroyed. And since we mentioned Bhagwan, for those who did not see it, they should read it.

Bhagwan published a letter in the Stabroek News referring to Tacuma Ogunseye as a peaceful and honourable citizen. I remind the young population that when the Buxton terror broke out, I did some daring investigations that brought me into contact with what Ogunseye was doing in Buxton.

I revealed it and he sued me for libel. My lawyer was Anil Nandlall; his lawyer was Mortimer Coddette (deceased). The case was thrown out by the judge because Coddette declined to continue. Cost was awarded that was never paid by Ogunseye. Coddette said that it would not be wise for certain types of information to come out. He knew why. I would have shocked Guyana and the CARICOM region with what I knew about who was involved in Buxton.

Finally, my third reason for waiting for June 13. It has to do with Clive Thomas, the Stabroek News columnist. He writes a weekly column in that newspaper and has avoided political subjects like COVID-19. It would be interesting to hear what he has to say about Rodney. In my June 13 column, I will iconoclastically question Rodney’s working-class credentials.