I was the WPA’s Counsel along with Moses Bhagwan (in absentia) and took my instructions from Tacuma Ogunseye, Jocelyn Dow, Dr. David Hinds, Desmond Trotman, Eusi Kwayana and to a lesser extent Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine.

As the French would say, “plus ca change……”

There were stories of photographs of these persons and their cars featuring in a PNC issued Recognition Handbook; of Roopnaraine and Nigel Westmaas having to seek shelter from Burnham’s goons in the cane fields of West Demerara; of Burnham mockingly promising to send Rodney to the Olympics for outrunning those same goons; of Burnham’s wicked plot to recruit Gregory Smith to kill Rodney and then sending Smith by GDF plane to French Guiana; of the opportunistic issue of passports by the Immigration Department; of the attempted public murder of leading member Dr. Josh Ramsammy in which a top PNC strongman still with us was named by the WPA; and of the killings by Burnham’s police of leading WPA members including Ohene Koama and Edward Dublin.

But the WPA was not cowed and the courage of Andaiye, Bonita Bone, Dow, Karen De Souza, Hinds, Ogunseye and Roopnaraine and hundreds of unsung heroes, employed and unemployed, academics and labourers, men and women, young and old, all risking their lives for democracy, for Rodney, for each other and for Guyana will long be remembered.

Hinds who is seen as a leading WPA spokesperson must recognise that Rodney’s party’s power sharing call arose in a pre-democracy era.

What WPA’s spokespersons, including Hinds, are now advocating is the abandonment of these Articles so that their party can stay in power – by any means necessary, to use Ogunseye’s words – as Burnham did from 1968 to 1985.