GUYANA-Former education minister dies.

GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC – Former education minister, Dr Rupert Roopnaraine, died Monday at the Georgetown Hospital after a prolonged period of illness. He was 83 years old.

Co-leader of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA), Dr. David Hinds, in confirming the death of the “firebrand” politician, said he played a key role in quelling decades of animosity with the People’s National Congress (PNC) and helped co-found the coalition, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), that formed the government here in 2015.

The WPA had always cited the PNC for being responsible for the bomb blast that killed its leader and historian, Dr. Walter Rodney, on June 13, 1980 at a time when that small party had vowed to remove the then Forbes Burnham-led government from office by any means necessary.

“I saw that Rupert engaged in soul-searching too, but he, I would say, was the leading member of the party who pushed us in the direction of making peace with the PNC in the national interest. So his capacity for reaching across the aisle is another of his legacies.

“He, along with Clive Thomas, was instrumental in the formation of the APNU. I think Rupert coined the coalition, A Partnership for National Unity, and he, Clive Thomas, and Robert Corbin brought the APNU into being. So I would say the APNU is Rupert’s baby. He worked in the early days to make the coalition a reality,” Hinds told the online publication, Demerara Waves.com.

The current PNCR Leader and APNU chairman, Aubrey Norton, said Dr. Roopnaraine applied the WPA’s principle of co-leadership in his relations with other political parties.

“He came from a WPA background where he was part of co-leadership, and that in itself suggests that he had an interest in accommodating others’ views, and in that regard, that would have been significant in terms of impacting the WPA and the APNU.

As I understand it, Rupert was very significant in the APNU and in the political landscape, especially as it relates to ideas about inclusion and moving forward,” he said, adding that Roopnaraine could not be easily replaced.

The cause of his death has not been disclosed.