Parliament Is Not a Podcast

OPINION BY : Hem Kumar October 2026

Attorney General Anil Nandlall, SC, has delivered a lecture to the Opposition on its democratic duties. He says it must rise above allegations of corruption, local complaints and political exchanges; that it must offer constructive criticism, policy guidance and a credible alternative vision for Guyana.

On its face, that proposition is beyond dispute.

Guyana needs serious debate about the cost of living, Venezuela’s continuing threat to our territorial integrity, climate change, food security, public debt, oil wealth, infrastructure priorities and the long-term shape of the economy. The Opposition, whether large or small, has a responsibility to scrutinize the Government, propose alternatives and demonstrate that it is capable of governing.

 But the Attorney General’s sermon collapses under the weight of the Government’s own conduct.

How can the Opposition perform the role he now demands when the very institution designed for that role—the National Assembly—has been treated as an occasional convenience of the Executive? How can a parliamentary opposition be expected to conduct sustained policy scrutiny when Parliament is summoned only intermittently, and principally when the Government has legislation, spending or other business it considers necessary to process?

The country cannot be told, with a straight face, that the Opposition must elevate national discourse while Parliament—the constitutional forum for national discourse—is left dormant.

The learned Attorney General appears to want the Opposition to discuss the country’s most serious concerns in the “open spaces”: through podcasts, press conferences, Facebook posts and public exchanges. But Guyana did not establish a Parliament, elect Members of the National Assembly, appoint a Speaker and sustain a parliamentary administration at public expense merely to turn public policy into a social-media contest.

A podcast is not Parliament. A Facebook Live is not Parliament. A press release is not Parliament.

 The National Assembly is where ministers are answerable, where questions may be asked on the public record, where documents can be demanded, where laws are examined, where budgets are scrutinized, where motions are debated and where the Government must confront—not evade—the representatives of the people.

That is why the low number of sittings is so deeply troubling. Four sittings over thirteen months is not an active legislative program. It is not a serious commitment to democratic scrutiny. It is certainly not a convincing foundation on which the Government can demand that the Opposition provide rigorous, sustained and policy-driven engagement on every major challenge confronting the country.

If the Attorney General believes the Opposition has been silent on Venezuela, then why has the Government not brought the issue before Parliament for a comprehensive national debate?  Why was the LOO not briefed by the learned, ever-expressive AG.  Venezuela’s posture is not a side issue. It is perhaps the most grave and enduring national-security challenge facing Guyana. It demands more than ministerial statements, selective briefings and political criticism.

If the Government wants a serious discussion about the cost of living, let it bring the matter to the House. Let ministers explain why prices remain punishing for ordinary families despite the country’s unprecedented oil revenues. Let the Opposition table its proposals. Let Government defend its policies. Let the country hear the arguments and judge the competing prescriptions.

If food security is a central regional responsibility, let Parliament examine the plans, targets, funding, land-access arrangements, drainage and irrigation systems, logistics and markets required to meet that responsibility. If climate change and sea-level rise are existential concerns, let the Government submit its adaptation strategy, financing plans and coastal-defense priorities to the scrutiny of the people’s representatives.

 And if Guyana is navigating the tension between fossil-fuel expansion and environmental responsibility, Parliament must not be reduced to an afterthought. The management of petroleum wealth, the terms of major agreements, the use of the Natural Resource Fund, local-content compliance, gas-to-energy expenditures and the country’s environmental safeguards deserve frequent and searching examination.

These are not matters to be left to carefully curated media appearances.

Nor should the Government be permitted to use the language of “constructive criticism” as a code for an Opposition that criticizes only on terms acceptable to the Government. Constructive criticism does not mean timid criticism. It does not mean that the Opposition must first secure ministerial approval before exposing failures, waste, secrecy, conflicts of interest or abuse of power.

A healthy opposition must be free to investigate, accuse, challenge and demand answers. It must pursue corruption allegations where evidence warrants them. It must question projects, procurement, land allocations, public spending, contracts and local failures, because those failures affect real people and real communities. Roads, farms, fences, drainage, pumps and other local concerns may appear to be “minutiae” to those in high office, but they are not minor to the farmer whose crop is destroyed, the household whose property floods or the community left without essential services.

The Attorney General should know that accountability does not become trivial merely because it is grounded in the daily hardship of citizens.

Still, he is right on one point: Guyana needs a higher quality of policy debate. But that debate must take place first and foremost where the Constitution intended it to take place—in Parliament.

The Government cannot shutter or marginalize the nation’s principal deliberative chamber, then rebuke the Opposition for seeking alternative public spaces in which to be heard. It cannot restrict opportunities for formal scrutiny and then complain when the national conversation moves to the media, public meetings and social platforms. It cannot weaken parliamentary culture and then feign disappointment at the quality of political discourse outside Parliament.

That is not statesmanship. It is convenience masquerading as concern for democracy.

Is it on social media? Is it on a podcast? Is it in press statements? Is it at public meetings? Or is it in the National Assembly, where the Government and Opposition can meet openly, regularly and under the scrutiny of the people?

If the Attorney General’s answer is that these matters belong in Parliament, then the remedy lies largely with his own Government. Convene the House regularly. Permit meaningful debates. Provide sufficient time for questions and motions. Make ministers answerable. Facilitate parliamentary committees. Treat the Opposition as an elected institution, not an inconvenience to be managed.

And if Parliament is to remain largely idle while public affairs are debated in open spaces, then taxpayers are entitled to ask why they are carrying the expense of a parliamentary establishment that is not being allowed to fulfil its central constitutional purpose. The public purse is already under pressure. Pensioners are still compelled to fight for benefits they say are legally due to them. Families continue to confront high food prices and rising living costs. In that context, every dollar spent on underused democratic institutions demands explanation.

 Guyana does not need an Opposition invited to perform democracy on social media. It needs a Parliament that works.

Mr. Nandlall cannot credibly demand an effective opposition while accepting an ineffective parliamentary calendar. The Government cannot call for policy guidance while withholding the principal platform for policy debate. And no amount of eloquence on a podcast can substitute for a living, active and accountable National Assembly.

The Opposition must improve where it has failed. But the Government must first stop denying it the forum in which an opposition is constitutionally meant to function.

 “Not Running a Democracy”: Anderson Makes Good on His Own Word

OPINION BY: Hem Kumar October 2026

On August 14, 2026, CCJ President Justice Winston Anderson issued a nine-page statement rejecting allegations that he had manipulated panel composition to influence case outcomes. He called the suggestion “irresponsible, intellectually dishonest, injudicious and quite simply, malevolent.” He announced a structural remedy — every judge would henceforth sit on every panel unless excused for legitimate reason — and gave no sign he intended to resign.

Three weeks later, according to a six-page e-mail Justice Peter Jamadar sent on September 4, 2026 to Anderson, the Regional Judicial and Legal Services Commission, fellow judges and court staff, Anderson was personally present while Jamadar’s own administrative officer, Candace Simmons-Peters, was questioned about her printing records, her work hours, her communications with Jamadar, and documents connected to an RJLSC-facilitated intervention. She was required to surrender her CCJ computer for examination. And, Jamadar alleges, Anderson referenced the possibility of a two-year prison sentence under Trinidad and Tobago’s Computer Misuse Act.

This is not a continuation of the dress-code dispute. It is a different and more serious category of conduct, and it deserves to be named as such: a sitting president of the region’s apex court, already under formal allegation of panel-fixing from a majority of his own bench, using an internal leak investigation to question a judge’s staff about that judge’s private and professional activities — with a criminal statute invoked in the room.

WHAT ANDERSON PROMISED, WHAT ANDERSON DID

Anderson’s own August 14 statement is now the measure against which his September conduct must be read. He did not merely deny panel-fixing — he characterized the very inference as malevolent, staking his credibility on there being no pattern of unilateral overreach beneath the dress-code dispute. He proposed a fix explicitly designed to remove his own discretion over panel composition going forward.

Nothing in that statement reserved him a role in personally investigating a sitting judge’s staff, examining their computer, or sitting in on a conversation in which a criminal prison term was raised. If the August remedy was sincere, the September conduct is very difficult to square with it. If it was not, the remedy was theatre — a controlled concession on the issue already public, offered to forestall scrutiny of what remained private.

THREE INCIDENTS, ONE PATTERN — IN JAMADAR’S OWN WORDS

Jamadar’s complaint does not rest on the Simmons-Peters episode alone. He lays out three incidents he says cannot be viewed in isolation: a judges’ meeting where Anderson’s stance shifted from inviting in-person attendance to expecting it; the questioning of his administrative officer; and an earlier August meeting where Anderson told him that non-attendance might give Anderson “a reason to write to you” — language Jamadar calls “shocking.” He notes that fellow judge Maureen Rajnauth-Lee received a similarly pointed e-mail, while three other judges who made the same postponement request did not.

“Certainly, I feel targeted, harassed, and bullied (directly or indirectly) by their occurrence, and their proximity to the wider contexts that are related to the broader and unresolved impasse among the judges and the CCJ President.”

Selective treatment of judges who raised the same objection, on the same point, is itself a data point. Of five judges who sought to postpone an August meeting, two — Jamadar and Rajnauth-Lee — received pointed follow-up from Anderson. The other three did not. Jamadar and Rajnauth-Lee are, notably, two of the five judges on record from the original leaked correspondence raising concerns about Anderson’s leadership. The selection is not random on its face, and Anderson’s own August statement offers no account of it, because the question had not yet been asked.

THE STRUCTURAL OBJECTION JAMADAR RAISES HIMSELF

Jamadar’s complaint identifies the same institutional defect already flagged in this publication’s prior coverage of Ralph Ramkarran’s defense of Anderson: Anderson chairs the RJLSC, the body with nominal authority to review conduct at the court, and he is also the central figure in the underlying dispute. Jamadar asks directly whether Anderson should play any role in investigating judges or staff when he is himself closely involved in the matter under investigation — and whether the RJLSC even knew of, approved, or supported the inquiry being conducted in its name.

No answer has been provided. The Sunday Express sent questions to Anderson, the court’s communications department and the RJLSC on September 30, resent them October 5, and received nothing by press time. That is the same silence this publication has tracked through the August 14 statement, the Aug 13 joint Heads of Judiciary statement, and the unanswered fifteen questions over D’Almada. An institution capable of a nine-page rebuttal when the allegation is public has had five weeks to answer six questions put to it privately, and has chosen not to.

RETRIBUTION, OR SOMETHING THE COURT SHOULD STILL BE ASKED TO RULE OUT

Is this retribution? The honest answer is that the record, as it stands, supports the inference without yet proving it. Jamadar was one of five judges whose concerns about Anderson’s leadership became public in August. He is now one of two judges, out of five who made an identical request, singled out for a pointed response from Anderson. His administrative officer was questioned in the course of a leak investigation about material — an RJLSC-facilitated intervention file — that Jamadar says has no logical connection to the alleged disclosure to the press. And the questioning of that officer escalated to a reference to criminal prison time.

None of that proves Jamadar was the Sunday Express’s source, and this publication is not asserting that he was — nor does Jamadar’s own e-mail make that claim about himself. What the record does show is a president who, having been accused of punishing a judge over a point of disagreement once already, is now the central figure in an investigation that a second judge experienced as punitive, run through that judge’s own staff, with a criminal statute invoked as leverage.

Whether Jamadar leaked the correspondence is a question only the investigation he is now objecting to could answer honestly — which is precisely why it should not be Anderson conducting it.

Anderson told his colleagues in July 2025 that he did not see himself as “running a democracy.” In May 2026, he overrode a colleague on a point of law rather than let it be aired collegially in Barrow v Caricom. In June, he removed Eboe-Osuji from a panel over a disagreement he later insisted was purely about attire — a claim the Robateau timeline does not support. In August, he denied all of it in the strongest possible terms and promised reform. In September, by his own administrative officer’s apparent experience and Jamadar’s sworn account, he personally oversaw an inquiry into a sitting judge’s private affairs with a prison sentence on the table.

Each incident, taken alone, might be explained away. Taken together, across six months, they describe a president who has been entirely consistent — just not in the way his August statement promised.

— The Board

  Future Guyana : Populism or Meritocracy? 

OPINION BY: Hem Kumar October 2026

Guyana Must Not Build an Oil Republic on Patronage, Fear and Political Theatre

(RAE Dictionary and Nadler, Judy; Schulman, Miriam)

Guyana is being told that it is entering a new era: unprecedented wealth, modern infrastructure, expanded opportunity and national transformation. The promise is real. But so is the danger.

A country does not become developed merely because billions of United States dollars flow through its accounts, highways are commissioned, bridges are announced, and ministers cut ribbons before television cameras.

Development requires something more difficult: institutions that can withstand power, leaders who accept scrutiny, and citizens who refuse to exchange principle for political access.

Guyana’s central question is no longer whether oil will make the country richer. It is whether the country’s political culture will become more democratic, more transparent and more merit-based—or whether oil will finance the old vices on a scale never before possible.

The warning is plain: Guyana cannot build a new republic with the moral habits of the old political order.

 “Oil wealth does not erase political corruption, cronyism or authoritarian instincts. It gives them more money, more reach and more reasons to survive.”

The Cult of Political Performance

A troubling form of digital populism is taking root. Political leaders and their defenders increasingly operate as though public performance is a substitute for public accountability.

Every visit becomes a photo opportunity. Every promise becomes a social-media production. Every criticism is met with an online army of defenders, insults, selective statistics and accusations of disloyalty. Ministers appear permanently in campaign mode, displaying projects before the public has been allowed to examine costs, contracts, environmental implications, procurement procedures or long-term maintenance obligations.

This is not transparency. It is political marketing.

The governing PPP-C has become highly skilled at presenting visible development as conclusive proof of good governance. Roads, schools, hospitals, housing schemes and cash-grant announcements are repeatedly used to create an atmosphere in which citizens are expected to applaud first and ask questions later.

The opposition, meanwhile, cannot claim the moral high ground merely by criticizing the government’s excesses. It must also demonstrate that it has abandoned the patronage, racial mobilization, opaque decision-making and personality-driven politics that have damaged Guyana for generations.

“A government should be judged not by how often it appears before cameras, but by whether its decisions survive independent scrutiny.”

The Patronage State Is Expanding

The greatest threat to Guyana’s democratic future is not simply corruption in its crude and illegal form. It is the normalization of a patronage State: a system in which contracts, employment, land, licenses, boards, concessions, promotions and access to opportunity are perceived to depend on proximity to political power.

Guyana has long suffered from the corrosive belief that advancement depends not primarily on competence, but on connections—party connection, family connection, business connection, ethnic connection or personal connection.

Oil wealth has intensified the stakes.

The State now has access to unprecedented revenue, and with it, unprecedented capacity to reward loyalty and punish dissent. Major infrastructure contracts, public-sector employment, regional projects, land distribution, housing allocation, local-content opportunities, State boards and public procurement have become areas in which transparency must be non-negotiable.

Yet the public too often receives announcements rather than full disclosure; assurances rather than independently verifiable documentation; and political explanations rather than answers to basic questions.

Who received the contract? Who else bid? What was the evaluation criteria? What are the beneficial owners of the successful companies? What changes were made to the contract after award? Is there a conflict of interest? Has the project remained within budget? Who will be held responsible if it fails?

Those are not opposition questions. They are public questions.

“When citizens must know someone before they can receive fair treatment from the State, citizenship has been replaced by political dependency.”

The Merit Deficit

The problem is not that Guyana lacks qualified people. Guyana has capable public servants, engineers, economists, lawyers, teachers, health professionals, energy specialists, environmental experts and young people with the ability to build a modern State.

The problem is that too often, competence competes with loyalty—and loyalty wins.

Appointments to boards, agencies, diplomatic posts, public corporations, commissions and senior administrative positions must not become rewards for party service, personal allegiance or political convenience.                                                                                   Public offices cannot be treated as extensions of party headquarters.

A government that claims to be modernizing Guyana must be willing to modernize how it selects and evaluates public officials. It must publish criteria for major appointments, protect professional public servants, require declarations of interest, disclose qualifications, enforce ethical standards and remove persons who fail—not merely shield them because they are politically useful.

The same standard applies to the opposition and to civil society. The country cannot condemn cronyism in government while practicing it internally. It cannot demand ethical leadership while promoting individuals whose record consists of abuse, racial provocation, political opportunism or unverified self-promotion.

 “A title, party jersey, online following or proximity to power is not a qualification for public office.”

Haste Is Not a Development Plan

The administration often presents speed as proof of competence. Guyana, it says, cannot wait. The country must build now, spend now, expand now and seize the moment.

The faster the money is spent, the more carefully the public must examine how it is spent.

Major projects demand published feasibility studies, credible environmental assessments, procurement transparency, clear cost estimates, maintenance plans, independent technical review and meaningful consultation with the communities affected.

They require Parliament to function as a serious forum of oversight, not as a stage for predictable partisan warfare.

This is especially true in the oil sector, where decisions affecting the Natural Resource Fund, petroleum contracts, gas-to-energy arrangements, local-content policy, environmental liability, flaring, offshore safety and the terms under which Guyana’s resources are extracted will define national sovereignty for decades.

“A project is not successful because it is announced quickly. It is successful when it is necessary, lawful, affordable, transparent and durable.”

The “Ends Justify the Means” Trap

Perhaps the most dangerous argument in Guyana today is that criticism should be muted because development is taking place.

Do not question too much, citizens are told. Do not demand too much disclosure. Do not make noise. Do not challenge the government while roads are being built, jobs are being created and money is being distributed.

That mentality is the beginning of democratic decline.

A government can build infrastructure and still undermine accountability. It can distribute cash grants and still politicize public resources. It can speak of inclusion while concentrating decision-making among a narrow circle. It can invoke national development while treating criticism as sabotage.

No national project is so important that it must be protected from public examination. No party is so indispensable that it should be exempt from ethical standards. No leader is so effective that citizens should surrender their right to demand answers.

The end does not justify the means—not in a democracy, and certainly not in an oil-rich country where the means involve billions belonging to present and future generations.

“When accountability becomes inconvenient, power begins to confuse itself with the nation.”

Guyana’s Venezuela Warning

Guyana is not Venezuela, and it should not be casually compared to Venezuela. The histories, institutions and political conditions are different.

But there is a warning in every country that allows political power to become permanent, public opportunity to become partisan property, criticism to become an act of hostility, and citizens to become dependent on the goodwill of those in office.

Democratic decline rarely arrives with one dramatic declaration. It emerges through small accommodations: the contract that cannot be questioned, the appointment that cannot be challenged, the critic who is isolated, the reporter who is denied information, the public servant who is sidelined, the procurement process that remains hidden, the law that is selectively enforced, and the citizen who stays silent because they need a job, a house lot, a contract or a favor.

Guyana is at a crossroads. Its oil wealth can fund strong schools, modern hospitals, resilient communities, reliable electricity, national connectivity, economic diversification and a genuinely fairer society.

“The question is not whether Guyana has money. The question is whether it has the courage to build institutions stronger than the people temporarily controlling that money.”

Guyana deserves more than a richer version of the past.

It deserves a republic in which public office is earned through competence, public funds are protected by transparency, national assets are managed for all citizens, and no political party—regardless of its achievements—can place itself above scrutiny.

The choice is being made now, contract by contract, appointment by appointment, project by project, silence by silence.

 The Dangers  of Silence on Domestic Violence : What Are They Afraid Of?

OPINION BY : Hem Kumar October 2026 

A woman reported that she was assaulted. The matter went before the court. Evidence was heard. A Magistrate found Daniel Seeram guilty of assault causing actual bodily harm to his former wife and remanded him pending sentencing. His subsequent challenge to that remand order was rejected by the High Court. The court has spoken.

Yet Seeram has not presented himself to face the consequence of that conviction. He remains free, while the country is left without a clear official explanation of his custodial status, the authority under which he remains at liberty, or what steps are being taken to enforce the orders of the court.

But perhaps the most deafening feature of this entire disgrace is not only the apparent failure of custody. It is the silence of the women and institutions that have repeatedly claimed to stand at the frontline of the national fight against domestic violence. 

Where is the Minister of Human Services?

Where is the Minister of Home Affairs—herself an attorney and a woman, with responsibility for the agencies whose cooperation is essential to the enforcement of court orders and lawful custody?

Where is the leadership of the Guyana Police Force? Where is the Guyana Prison Service? Where is the Chancellor and the institutional leadership of the judiciary? Where are the women’s legal associations, women-centered civil-society organizations, survivor advocates, and the international partners and donor agencies that have financed campaigns, workshops, policy papers and programs on gender-based violence?

No one is asking any institution to interfere with a pending legal process. No one is asking them to decide Seeram’s guilt; the Magistrate has already done so. No one is asking them to dictate a sentence; that remains a matter for the court.

They are being asked to stand for justice.

They are being asked to say that a remand order is not optional. They are being asked to insist that a convicted man cannot remain outside custody without a transparent, lawful explanation. They are being asked to recognize that justice for survivors does not begin and end with workshops, press releases, orange ribbons, televised speeches and ceremonial declarations during observance months.

Justice is tested in the hard cases—when the accused is influential, politically connected, employed by the state, or useful to the powerful.

That is where the real courage lies.

A country cannot claim to be confronting domestic violence while becoming mute when a survivor’s case reaches the point of consequence. It cannot lecture women about reporting abuse, coming forward, trusting the police, trusting the courts and using the mechanisms established for their protection—then stand silent when the system appears to falter after a conviction is secured.

What are women who are presently enduring violence expected to conclude from this spectacle? What should a woman contemplating a police report believe when she watches a convicted state official remain unaccounted for, apparently beyond the ordinary reach of custody? What assurance can be offered to a survivor who has been told, repeatedly, that the law will protect her?

The message, unless decisively corrected, is brutal: report the violence, endure the investigation, relive the trauma in court, wait through delay and public scrutiny—then watch power, access and official silence make accountability negotiable.

That is not protection. That is abandonment.

The failure to publicly demand clarity is not neutrality. Silence in the face of apparent unequal treatment carries its own meaning. It tells survivors that their pain becomes inconvenient when it collides with political relationships. It tells ordinary women that the systems celebrated in glossy reports and grand presentations may operate differently when the alleged perpetrator is connected to the machinery of state.

This is why the silence is such a shameful indictment. Every ribbon-cutting ceremony, every donor-funded initiative, every ministerial address and every declaration of concern for women’s safety is hollow if institutions cannot summon the moral strength to stand with one victim when it matters most.

There can be no serious national campaign against domestic violence without a serious national commitment to consequences. And consequences cannot depend on party colours, proximity to the executive, title, rank, or usefulness to those in power.

The hard question, therefore, must be asked: What are they afraid of?

Editor’s Note: The Precedent We Are Creating

The precedent being set by this unfolding matter is not confined to one victim, one convicted man, or one court order. It reflects a nation increasingly rich in promises but dangerously poor in deliverance

For years, women have been urged to report abuse, seek protection, trust the police, use the courts, engage support agencies and believe that the system will stand with them. But what happens when a woman does exactly that—when she endures the reporting process, the scrutiny, the trauma of a trial, and ultimately secures a conviction—only for the public to be left asking whether the convicted person has submitted to the custody ordered by the court?

What lesson are young women meant to draw from this?

A girl watching this spectacle may conclude that abuse is simply something to endure. She may decide that seeking shelter in the institutions designed to protect her is useless—like a bite without teeth. She may learn, long before she should, that speaking up brings exposure and pain, while influence and connection may soften the consequences for the person who hurt her.

That is a dangerous national lesson to teach.

It risks cultivating a culture in which women resign themselves to violence as an unavoidable condition of life, rather than seeing it as a wrong that the state is duty-bound to confront. It also sends an equally destructive message to young men: that violence against women can be rationalized, minimized, delayed, negotiated, or insulated from consequence when one has the right access, the right friends, or the right political value.

Guyana already confronts a deeply troubling reality in which too many complaints by victims of domestic violence are met with delay, disbelief, indifference or inaction. If this episode is allowed to pass without clarity and accountability, it will deepen that existing culture. It may encourage police officers—consciously or otherwise—to begin making their own judgments about which women deserve urgent protection, which complaints are worth pursuing, and which alleged perpetrators are too connected to be treated like everybody else.

Then the law becomes unequal long before it reaches a courtroom.

The national consequence is severe. A country cannot build a genuine culture of protection for women while allowing visible uncertainty around the enforcement of orders in a domestic-violence case involving a connected official.

It cannot spend public funds and donor resources on campaigns against gender-based violence, then fail to demonstrate that a woman’s right to justice survives beyond the moment she gives testimony.

Justice must not be a performance staged for observance months, donor reports, ribbon cuttings and official speeches. It must have force when it is inconvenient. It must mean something when the accused is powerful. And it must be visible enough for every young woman in Guyana to know that if she seeks help, the law will not abandon her at the moment accountability is supposed to begin.