The Working People’s Alliance (WPA) is marking the 42nd anniversary of the assassination of its co-leader, Dr Walter Rodney, on Monday with a pledge to help create an organized national movement to resist “dictatorship” and create a new political order based on power-sharing.
“Such a movement should be multi-party, multi-racial, and multi-class. WPA is prepared to help build that movement. Our objective in this regard is not just the offending party, but most importantly against the offending political order,” the WPA said in a statement reflecting on the June 13, 1980 bomb blast that killed Rodney, a noted academic.
Dr. Walter Rodney was killed after being supplied with a bomb in a walkie-talkie by then Guyana Defence Force (GDF) electronics expert, Sergeant Gregory Smith, who then fled to French Guiana until his death from cancer in 2002.
The WPA noted that during the period 1970 and early 1990, together with the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) they shared the common objective of removing the then Forbes Burnham-led People’s National Congress (PNC) government.
In what had been widely regarded as the first free and fair elections in 28 years, the PPP won the October 5, 1992 general election.
But the WPA, which had been a junior partner in the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), government that lost the 2020 general election, said while electoral democracy is an “essential ingredient” in building a democratic order, it warned that an anti-dictatorial movement similar to the Rodney period “must not simply exchange one party for the other as we did in 1992, but it must strive to erase the conditions under which dictatorship thrives.
The WPA, which has since withdrawn from the APNU, said the ultimate defense against foreign domination and domestic ethnic-racial domination must be through power-sharing and shared governance.
“We urge the leaders of the two major parties to find ways to prepare the country for this eventuality. For us in the WPA, power-sharing is not about one party sharing the power of the other party, it’s about all parties sharing the collective power of the people of Guyana,” the WPA said.
It reminded the population that Rodney was killed “by a Guyana government and State that had descended to the lowest depths of dictatorship and autocracy” and urged the population to reflect on whether Guyana has returned to the dictatorial government and State against which Rodney fought.
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