THE last time I saw and spoke to Dr. Odle was in May 2015. I was passing by the WPA’s head office on New Garden Street and I saw a lot of activities, so I stepped in knowing I won’t be welcomed, but when you are in journalism, your curiosity knows no limits.
Dr. Odle was there with Tacuma Ogunseye, and other WPA big names feasting on a bucket of KFC chicken. The courtesy was not extended to me by an offer of a piece of chicken. All of the WPA persons present were in a celebratory mood. After decades in the wilderness, the WPA would now be in power.
And Dr. Odle, Clive Thomas, Rupert Roopnaraine, Ogunseye and others became part of the government, of course, through a coalition with the PNC. I bought Dr. Odle’s autobiography because I think political theorists all over the world who study Caribbean politics are still waiting to hear the analysis of the top WPA names in the government of Guyana, 2015-2020 on why the WPA failed so miserably in the exercise of power and have now become reviled names in Caribbean politics.
Guyana’s historiography will forever have a large aperture if Odle, Thomas and Roopnaraine do not write on the subject. Tragically that aperture will have a permanent place in Guyana’s historiography because Odle did not touch the subject in his memoir, Roopnaraine is not in good health from what I
have been reliably informed and Clive Thomas doesn’t look like he is interested in the subject.
When Robert Corbin, the leader of the PNC, was in discussion with the WPA on the formation of the APNU, the major influence on the shape of the new construct came from the WPA of which Odle was party to the discussion.
It was the leaders of the WPA, including Odle, who birthed APNU. And so in 2015, Odle, Thomas and Roopnaraine took up huge slots of power in the APNU+AFC government. Odle, in his autobiography, described the important, strategic placements of having state power.
But Odle, Thomas and Roopnaraine were not better performers than the PPP leaders that they displaced in 2015. More importantly, while the AFC became dead meat after 2015, the WPA became a piece of carcass after 2015. Odle’s autobiography evades this priceless piece of Guyana’s historiography, like COVID-19.
The great WPA leaders from the 1970s whose revolutionary zeal is captured in a number of books including, “The Sky’s Wild Noise,” “Walter Rodney: A Promise of a revolution,” and “The PPP: An Oral History,” became an infinitesimal footnote after 2015. Nowhere is there any discussion of the self-destruction of the WPA after 2015 in Odle’s book.
Odle has done an injustice to historians by embracing these omissions. With his intellect, Guyana’s historiography would definitely have been better. Here is one egregious example whose inclusion in the book caused me to rush down to Austin’s bookstore to buy it after Odle told me it was available there. But the egregious example was missing from Odle’s text and when I sat on the seawall reading the memoir with my dog next to me, deep frustration ran down my spine because of Odle’s evasions.
Here is the missing egregious incident. Odle was present at a WPA executive meeting in 2016, which Roopnaraine told his party executives that he will not discuss government business with a political party (he used those words). This was incredible dereliction of political obligation to the party that propelled you into power. Only one person objected to that unthinkable heresy–Tacuma Ogunseye. He was so livid that he exposed Roopnaraine by publishing a letter of Roopnaraine’s position in the Stabroek News. Please note: This isn’t Frederick Kissoon saying this; it is in Stabroek News.
Odle, in his autobiography, appears infantile in the eyes of the readers when he said that he resigned from the WPA in 2017 because he had a quarrel with Thomas over a statement Thomas gave to Kaieteur News about NICIL which Odle headed at the time. For all the betrayals that the WPA performed
against the Guyanese people, against Guyanese history, against Caribbean people, against Caribbean history and against the post-colonial world, Odle chose to resign from the WPA over an inconsequential, insipid, jejune mistake between himself and Clive Thomas.
So while Odle was ensconced in the APNU+AFC regime and watched 7,000 sugar workers put out of bread and 42,000 sugar estate families made to suffer, Odle, Thomas and Roopnaraine were quite happy with the power they had. I remember Moses Bhagwan told his interviewer, Professor Frank Birbalsingh, that he resigned from the PPP in 1965 because resignation is better than staying and be part of the problem. More on Odle’s memoir is forthcoming.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.