Drugb posted:Mars posted:Joshua Ramsammy and Rupert Roopnarine were in leadership positions in the WPA. I don't remember them being shown the door.
Both gentlemen only attained leadership roles post Rodney and represented the minority of Indians. The point is that this idea that Rodney united the races is fiction. Why else did the PNC and the PPP continue their majority? He may have united a few but that doesn't make him the great uniter.
Rodney went out of his way to cooperate with these two Indians. This because he wished to foster racial unity.
He realized that much of the support that the PNC received from blacks was their fear of Indian domination. In order to entice them away from the PNC, he had to demonstrate that there was a solid group of Indians also willing to leave the PPP. So he needed to unite with Indians who led strong grass roots
WPA was built around the charisma of Rodney. This is why Burnham set out to assassinate him. This is why I maintain that Cheddi was not upset when Rodney was killed.
Were there a free and fair election in 1980 the WPA would have won, with a majority African vote, and with a substantial minority of Indian voters.
Minus Rodney the remaining leadership were too intellectual in their approach, and in any case their socialist orientation had become archaic in the eyes of most Guyanese.
So in 1992 Guyanese went back to their racial bases.
I agree that there was no proof that Rodney truly united the races. Were the PPP more effective, it would have been unlikely that he would have received any Indian support. One can argue that Indians wanted to see two black factions, battle, allowing them to scoop up the spoils.