LAST Friday evening, three of us sat around a table discussing Rupert Ropnaraine. It was me, Donald Rodney, the brother of Walter Rodney, and Leyland DeCambra, one of the founders and funders of the UK branch of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA). The occasion was the wake at the Ahmadiyya mosque on Brickdam for Ronald Gordon, former deputy Imam of the mosque and a friend I have known for 58 years.
Naturally, the subject would be WPA. Donald said the thing that bothers him up to this day about the merger of the WPA and PNC is that when they achieved State power, what did the WPA ask for. He opined that the WPA should have demanded an inquest into the assassination of Ohene Koama in 1979.
I infused the discussion with my critical comments on Roopnaraine, but I am not at liberty to air Donald’s views on the man, but Leyland does not have any qualms about criticising Roopnaraine. Leyland told Donald and I that the London group was never an admirer of Roopnaraine, particularly Diane Matthews (deceased), former wife of the famous Guyanese theatre personality, Mark Matthews.
The entire Saturday morning my thoughts were about what Donald said about the non-existent Koama inquiry. So, Saturday afternoon, while walking my dog, I called Ohene Koama Jnr. to have his thinking on how Donald Rodney feels about the lack of an enquiry for his assassinated father.
We had a long conversation, but he has not given me permission to put in my columns many of his thoughts. I was limited to four. One was that he agrees with Donald that when the WPA got into power, it should have held an investigation into his father’s death. Two – he thinks that when the monument in honour of Walter Rodney was erected on Hadfield Street, a block away from the assassination site, it should have been a monument in tribute to his father, too, and Edward Dublin. Three – he thinks that the WPA’s time in government was too short, so that could have explained why no inquest into his father’s death was done. Four – he wanted to know from me if I had any knowledge that when the PNC and WPA were talking about merger, if the WPA had requested a public statement from the PNC about its regrets about the killing of Rodney.
I am under no restraint not to publish my part of the discussion with the son of Ohene Koama. I had a mouthful to say about my analysis on Rupert Roopnaraine. My assessment of him can now be found on the Internet in five parts published in the Guyana Chronicle. So, there is no need to repeat the contents; suffice it to say my take on Roopnaraine is based on what I know from my decades of praxis.
I think his role in Guyanese politics is one of revolutionary betrayal. On meeting Roopnarine in 1976, and seeing him in politics decades after, my analysis of him is that he was one of the most insidious, scheming political personalities that Guyana’s politics has produced.
Now for my part of the interaction with Ohene. I was unambiguous with pellucid forcefulness that the WPA and the PNC did not merge. Rupert Roopnaraine and the PNC merged. By the time Robert Corbin came under the spell of Roopnarine, there was hardly any part of the WPA left, and Roopnaraine had long gone from the WPA.
His long absence from the WPA explains three things, and all three are public statements. One is David Hinds’s explanation that the selection of Roopnaraine as a Cabinet Minister was not a decision the WPA made, and the WPA was not consulted. This was the same Roopnaraine who, in 1993 at a WPA meeting with incredible calmness argued that it was atrocious for the PPP to appoint Clive Thomas as Minister of the Economy without asking theWPA for its choice.
Secondly, Tacuma Ogunseye published a letter in the Stabroek News in which he told the world that at a meeting of the WPA in 2016, Roopnaraine told those in attendance that when he is present at WPA meetings, he cannot disclose government business to a political party. That position of Roopnaraine revealed the depth of that man’s depravity.
Shortly after publication of that Ogunseye letter, a delegation from the WPA Overseas group, including David Hinds and Alissa Trotz, met with Roopnaraine, who was the then education minister. He made it clear to them; he cannot discuss government business with party executives.
Thirdly, Roopnaraine, in an interview with Dr. Dhanpaul Narine from the newspaper “The West Indian” (August 19, 2017) said that President David Granger is more attendant to his needs than the WPA. He told Narine that he and David Granger go back a long way. To be continued.
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.
