RUPERT Roopnaraine (RR) has been secretly dancing with the PNC since he returned to Guyana in 1976. The secret became public after a while. The rumour that will follow RR’s name forever has two counterparts. People will always link Eusi Kwayana’s name to the partition of Guyana. Whenever the name Nigel Hughes comes up, his mathematical formula of 34 being half of 65 will be remembered long into the future.
Whenever RR’s name comes up, the rumour will be invoked that he had always had something going on with the PNC, thus may have been a plant. Most people who are not PNC, AFC and WPA admirers that were/are high-level, experienced political actors told me that RR may have been a foreign intelligence informer.
It is not an implausible proposition. Martin Carter was a foreign intelligence plant (MI5) when he was in the PPP leadership in the early 1950s. There is still no definitive proof of Carter’s subterfuge because even though the British documents were released more than 50 years after, the heavy redactions make it impossible to pinpoint Carter.
Guyana will never know if RR worked for either the CIA or MI5 when he, Rodney and the WPA looked set to overthrow Burnham in the 1970s. Those documents will be released 50 years after (that will be 5 years from now), but extensive redactions will prevent any reader from identifying RR. But I think it is an open secret that someone high up in the WPA was an informant. It remains inconceivable to WPA survivors from that period to think someone so huge in status, like Roopnaraine, could have been a foreign plant.
RR always had a thing with the PNC and many WPA stalwarts had reservations about him from the 1970s onwards. One of the largest names in Guyana in the 1970s, Dr. Josh Ramsammy, told me that RR had a strange connection to the PNC. I will never forget that conversation.
It took place at the now defunct head office of Guyana Mortgage Bank in Kingston, opposite the police traffic head office. What needs to be recorded is that RR’s mother was a close friend of Burnham and RR would have known Burnham and Burnham’s party bigwigs when RR was at school. RR had a psychological attachment to the PNC that he repressed because of his closeness with Rodney.
That connection reached its climax in 2011 when RR single-handedly invented the A Partnership For National Unity (APNU). WPA stated that it was Clive Thomas and RR who architectured APNU. In fact, APNU was the baby of RR because he had a close working relationship with Robert Corbin and was a lifelong friend of David Granger. It was through RR, that his former common-law wife, Supriya Singh, joined the PNC.
When Granger started his monthly magazine, Guyana Review, it was RR that suggested the name because RR published a journal in the 1970s titled Georgetown Review. Only one edition was printed. I have three copies and I am willing to part with two. My cell is 614-5927. Email- fedkissoon@yahoo.com. RR was instrumental in Granger publishing his magazine.
Corbin was smitten by RR’s reasoning for having APNU and agreed to the PNC being subsumed under APNU. It was not Corbin who threw up the name of David Granger. That was RR’s doing. RR did not consult any WPA stalwart on the name of Granger. He went outside of political circles. One of the persons he raised Granger’s name with was RR’s friend, Stanley Ming.
The story of RR’s relationship with Granger has drawn suspicion on RR’s security status with the WPA in the seventies. RR gave an interview with the West Indian newspaper in which he said that he has always had a close friendship with Granger which started in school days. Here is where RR will forever remain a figure of non-heroic status.
Rodney was assassinated at a time when Granger was the head of the army. The CoI into Rodney’s death pointed to army involvement, although nothing was ever pointed to Granger and his name never came up in the CoI. But how does one reconcile RR’s “love” for Rodney and his friendship with Granger in that period?
I have a deeply held belief about RR. Had he not fallen ill in 2019, he would have landscaped the PNC’s retention of power in 2020. He would have gone to extreme lengths to ensure APNU did not fall from power because he had a personal vendetta against the PPP. The PPP knows RR conspired against it since the 1970s and does not see him in positive terms. RR’s role in modern politics has been a detrimental one. I conclude with part 5, in which I look at RR’s eugenic entitlement and Anglo-Saxon genetics.
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.
