Roopnaraine and Thomas: When revolutionaries become clowns

Oct 05, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Below are the reproductions of the words of Rupert Roopnaraine and Clive Thomas about their great revolutionary action in Suriname, Grenada and Guyana in support of Caribbean revolution. These are not extracts from other persons’ books but the words of Thomas and Roopnaraine themselves.
When you reflect on the revolutionary credentials of these men in the seventies and eighties, and you look at their pathetic self-erasure, then a deep sadness creeps over your psyche. How could these men allow themselves to be so humiliated by David Granger and a cabal of highly incompetent politicians inside the PNC?
Here is a little story that I dearly hope David Hinds will not deny or say he cannot recall. We were talking about the strained relation between the PNC and the WPA that was expanding over the removal of Roopnaraine as Education Minister and Roopnaraine’s flip-flopping without consulting the WPA.
At the first meetings between the PNC and WPA to discuss the Roopnaraine fall-out, the WPA fielded a 10-man delegation which consisted of some strange personalities. Among the WPA’s delegation was a member of the Justice for all Party, Jinnah Rahaman. Granger reacted angrily to a comment from Thomas and so he let Thomas have it, and Thomas kept quiet. I told David Hinds, if I was there, I would have gotten up and told Granger he is a political non-entity compared to Thomas. But look at what Thomas is today.
Let’s examine the words of yesterday’s revolutionaries who are today’s clowns. From pages 62 to 71 in his book, The Sky’s Wild Noise, Roopnaraine discusses his confidential closeness to the revolutionary governments of Desi Bouterse and Maurice Bishop in Suriname and Grenada respectively. On page 64, he wrote, “Apart from Maurice (Prime Minister Bishop of Grenada), with whom, it was easy to share an instinctive comradeship that went beyond politics… I became the WPA’s chief contact with the Surinamese military leadership.”
We’ll return to the high regard the revolutionary Government of Grenada had of Roopnaraine but let’s skip across to Thomas’ fight against the dictatorship of Forbes Burnham. Writing in, Walter Rodney: A Promise of Revolution by Clairmont Chung, on page 100, Thomas noted, “Father Malcolm Rodrigues used to put me up every night, he was responsible for my safety. That is how we survived because of the fear that attempts would be made to assassinate us. In fact, one was made; an attempt to kidnap me from my house.”
Here are the words of Thomas that highlights his vanished legacy. In the same book, he described how Prime Minister of Jamaica, Michael Manley, requested his advice to help him with the ailing Jamaican economy. He wrote, “Burnham called me and put me on a plane to take me to Jamaica.”
Where was the economic brilliance of Guyana’s leading academic, Professor Clive Thomas, was when he was part of the 2015 government in which in 28,000 family members connected to the sugar estate closures were impoverished; UG spent $21 million just to have an inauguration of the Vice Chancellor; $35 million was spent for the purchase of a Lexus SUV for President Granger. What economic advice did Thomas gave Granger?
Back to Roopnaraine. Here he presents his revolutionary credentials in his own words in his book, The Sky’s Wild Noise, “I received a telephone call from conveying a request from the NJM Central Committee to come immediately to the island to help in resolving the conflict… I arrived at Pearls Airport in the middle of the morning of October 17. I asked that he arrange a meeting with Maurice (Prime Minister Bishop).”
Here are two Caribbean revolutionaries who were at the height of their power and charisma at the beginning of the 1980s and both were so respected by iconic Caribbean Prime Ministers that their knowledge was sought by these Prime Ministers. Look at Roopnaraine and Thomas today. These men who advised the governments of Michael Manley in Jamaica and Maurice Bishop in Grenada signed a pact with the PNC in 2010 to merge the WPA with the PNC with no legal formula as to how power will be allocated if government is captured in a national election.
The merger did come to power in 2015 and the PNC virtually humiliated Roopnaraine and Thomas. Yesterday’s revolutionaries had become today’s sycophants. And being sycophants to whom? A man named David Granger that Roopnaraine and Thomas could have seen as early as 2016 had no leadership qualities and was the most lackluster governmental leader ever to emerge in the CARICOM region. What would the great Maurice Bishop and the great Michael Manley think of these two comical, faded, jaded Guyanese revolutionaries in today’s Guyana?

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)