Today, Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo conceded that the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) administration might have erred in not officially gazetting the renaming of the National Archives in honour of Dr. Walter Rodney. However, he said that that is still no excuse for the removal of his name from the signboard.
His comment on the matter was made after the Director-General of the Ministry of the Presidency, Joseph Harmon told the media at the post-Cabinet press conference that it was the PPP/C that failed to take the legal route in changing the name of the facility. He said that the PPP/C did not gazette the change, despite being obligated to do so.
Jagdeo is now seeking to rebound the lapse by saying that the government was too extreme in its approach to dealing with the matter.
He said, “If we didn’t gazette it when we renamed the archives in 2008 when I was President, [then] fix it by just gazetting it if we made an error. You just don’t remove it because we didn’t gazette it. They’ve been busy renaming everything the PPP named. You could put Granger’s name on buses [but] have those been gazetted? Are those State assets? You can put that there, but you can’t gazette one thing for Walter Rodney – the archives?”
Harmon indicated to the media this morning that the government will be moving to legitimize the renaming of the facility through the Official Gazette.
