AN INQUIRY INTO ITSELF

 AN INQUIRY INTO ITSELF

Why a Presidentially-Appointed Commission Cannot Investigate. The Government that Appoints It — and What Must Change Before any appointments.  

Seventy-three people are confirmed dead. Thirty remain unaccounted for. Seventy-six survived. On the night of July 18, the MV Barima — an 87-year-old vessel operated by the state’s own Transport and Harbours Department — capsized off Iron Pun in the Pomeroon River en route to Port Kaituma, carrying, by the government’s own revised count following a review of departure-stelling CCTV footage, 179 people, a figure that itself diverged from the official passenger manifest. It is already being described, without serious dispute, as the deadliest maritime disaster in Guyana’s modern history.

President Dr Irfaan Ali has now committed to naming, on July 26, a five-member Commission of Inquiry. He will select its members. He will set its Terms of Reference. He will determine, by extension, what the Commission is permitted to look at, whom it is permitted to summon, and what happens to its findings once they are filed. This media sets out why that structure is a conflict of interest as a matter of basic institutional design — not an accusation of bad faith against any named individual — and what specific, verifiable safeguards must appear in the published Terms of Reference before this Commission can be called independent in substance rather than in name

1.. THE STRUCTURAL PROBLEM

A Commission of Inquiry in Guyana is an executive instrument. It is created, staffed, and scoped by the President, and in the ordinary course of things its findings are published — or not — at the government’s discretion, and acted upon — or not — by the same government whose ministries and state entities sit within its potential findings of fault. This is not a partisan characterization; it is the plain operation of the Commissions of Inquiry framework as it currently exists.

The entities whose conduct falls squarely within the scope President Ali himself announced — vessel loading, passenger boarding procedures, seaworthiness, maintenance history, compliance with maritime law, crew competence, and the passenger-manifest discrepancy already confirmed by government review — are not private actors. The MV Barima was owned and operated by the Transport and Harbours Department, a state entity. Its regulatory overseer is the Maritime Administration Department, a state entity. The ministries with policy responsibility — Public Works under Minister Juan Edghill, and Public Utilities and Aviation under Minister Deodat Indar — are Cabinet appointees of the same President who will select the Commission’s members and write its mandate.

The appointing authority and the subjects of the inquiry occupy the same executive branch. That is the conflict — not an allegation, a fact of institutional architecture.

International commissioners do not, by themselves, cure this. Expertise in maritime law or disaster investigation says nothing about who controls their mandate, their subpoena power, their access to Cabinet-level witnesses, or the fate of their report once it is filed. A foreign engineer sitting on a panel whose Terms of Reference were drafted by the government under investigation is still working inside a mandate that government wrote

II.FOUR LEVERS OF CONTROL

Four specific points of control determine whether this Commission functions as genuine accountability or as a managed exercise in the appearance of it. Each remains, as of this writing, entirely at the President’s discretion.

• Terms of Reference. Whoever drafts the ToR decides what is investigated. A mandate that examines ‘operational factors’ without naming ministerial oversight, procurement decisions, or MARAD’s regulatory performance can produce a thorough-looking report that never reaches the political exposure. As of July 25, the government has not published a ToR. Opposition MP Dr Terrence Campbell has submitted a competing draft to the Speaker seeking to have Parliament — not the President alone — debate and shape it.
• Appointment and removal. Commissioners serve at the President’s pleasure for appointment, and in the ordinary CoI framework, for removal. Independence of judgment does not eliminate awareness of who conferred the appointment.
• Compulsion power. Whether the Commission can subpoena ministers, compel MARAD and Transport and Harbours Department records, and refer findings of criminal negligence or misconduct to the Director of Public Prosecutions is not automatic — it must be written into the ToR the President sets. Nothing announced to date guarantees this.
• Publication and implementation. Neither the release of the Commission’s report nor the implementation of its recommendations is self-executing. Both remain at the discretion of the government the report may implicate.

III. WHAT IS ALREADY IN DISPUTE

This is not a hypothetical concern raised in the abstract. It is the live subject of political conflict in Guyana in the days before the panel is named.

Transparency International Guyana Inc. has called for the domestic Commission to be replaced altogether by an investigation led by the International Maritime Organization and staffed by global maritime experts with no institutional stake in the outcome — and has demanded, as a minimum threshold of the President’s own stated commitment to transparency, the immediate recusal of Minister Edghill, Minister Indar, and MARAD’s senior management from any role in the inquiry’s design or operation.

Opposition parliamentarian Amanza Walton-Desir has demanded the government publish the Terms of Reference, panel membership, and legal basis for the Commission before it proceeds, noting none had been made public as of her statement. Dr Terrence Campbell has submitted a motion to adjourn the National Assembly specifically to debate the ToR, proposing the Commission be empowered to summon witnesses, compel documents, and refer evidence of negligence, misconduct, or corruption for prosecution or disciplinary action — powers that are not guaranteed under the government’s own framing. Opposition figures including Sarabo Haley have publicly questioned whether the government’s proposed Commission will be sufficiently independent at all. Christopher Ram has separately urged that the Commission be established under the specific statutory authority of the Guyana Shipping Act, 1998, rather than as a discretionary executive order, and be allowed to work entirely free of interference.

If President Ali is sincere about the transparency and accountability he has personally promised the families of the deceased, this is the minimum test of that sincerity — not a discretionary courtesy to ministers he appointed.”

— Transparency International Guyana Inc

IV .WHAT THE TERMS OF REFERENCE MUST CONTAIN

Before the Commission is named on July 26, and before its Terms of Reference are finalized, The 592 Guardian sets out the specific, verifiable safeguards that distinguish a genuine inquiry from a managed one. Anything less should be understood by the public, the families of the seventy-three dead, and Guyana’s international partners as a failure to meet the standard President Ali has himself already promised.

• Publish the full Terms of Reference before the Commission begins work, not after — including explicit, named scope over MARAD’s regulatory conduct, the Transport and Harbours Department’s operational conduct, and ministerial oversight by Minister Edghill and Minister Indar.
• Bind the Commission with statutory subpoena power to compel testimony from sitting ministers and the production of MARAD and T&HD records, including all documentation bearing on the confirmed passenger-manifest discrepancy.
• Secure the recusal of Minister Edghill, Minister Indar, and MARAD’s senior management from any role in shaping the Commission’s mandate, procedure, or resourcing.
• Guarantee unconditional publication of the Commission’s final report in full, on a fixed statutory timeline, with no ministerial or Cabinet power of redaction or delay.
• Establish a binding mechanism — parliamentary or judicial — for referring findings of negligence, misconduct, or institutional failure to the Director of Public Prosecutions, independent of executive discretion.
• Resolve, transparently and in public, the competing proposal that primary investigative jurisdiction sit with the International Maritime Organization rather than a domestic executive instrument — a question the government has not yet    answered                                                                • None  of this is an accusation that the five individuals named tomorrow will act in bad faith. It is a statement of institutional fact: a commission’s independence is a function of its mandate, not the biographies of its members. A distinguished panel operating inside a narrow, government-drafted ToR, without subpoena power over ministers, without a binding publication guarantee, is not independent — it is credentialed.

Guyana has been here before. The families gathered at Charity, at the Operations Centre, waiting for word of the missing, are owed more than a well-staffed committee. They are owed an inquiry structurally incapable of protecting the government that appointed it. That is the test the Terms of Reference — not the five names — will actually decide. The 592 Guardian will publish and assess the Terms of Reference in full the moment they are made public.

— The Board, The 592 Guardian