A Government That Cannot Finish the First Audit Has No Business Expanding Exxon’s Oil Empire

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY INJOURNALISM♦GUYANA 

A Government That Cannot Finish the First Audit Has No Business Expanding Exxon’s Oil Empire

OPINION BY :Hem Kumar 2026

The Government’s referral of the US $214 million ExxonMobil cost-recovery dispute to the International Chamber of Commerce is not evidence of firm stewardship. It is an overdue procedural step after more than five years of delay, indecision, and public evasion.

More than five years after Guyana was warned that ExxonMobil had placed  US $214million in questionable costs into the country’s petroleum cost bank, the Government of Guyana has finally admitted that it cannot even agree with the company on the appointment of a sole expert.

The matter is now before the International Chamber of Commerce, which will appoint the expert under Article 26 of the 2016 Production Sharing Agreement.

This is not a victory for Guyana. It is a confession of administrative weakness.

A government entrusted with the stewardship of one of the world’s most valuable oil discoveries has been unable to bring the first major Exxon audit to a conclusion. The audit covers expenses from 1999 to 2017,  years before first oil, and involves US $1.6 billion claimed by ExxonMobil. British consultant IHS Markit completed its report in March 2021. It concluded that Guyana had reasonable grounds to dispute US $214.4million, plus applicable overhead adjustments.

Yet, in October 2026, Guyana remains without a final determination.

The first audit is still unresolved. The second audit, involving US $7.2 billion in costs for 2018 to 2020 reportedly identified a further US $65 million in questionable charges. The third and largest audit, covering a staggering US $19.6billion, was reportedly submitted to Government since May 2025, but its contents remain hidden from the public.

That record is indefensible.

The Government Cannot Have It Both Ways

The administration wants Guyanese to believe that it is carefully safeguarding national revenue while, at the same time, it continues to facilitate the relentless expansion of ExxonMobil’s operations offshore.

New projects proceed. New production capacity is approved. New wells are drilled. New fields are developed. More oil is extracted. More revenues flow. And, critically, more costs are accumulated for Guyana to reimburse before the country receives its share of profit oil.

Every new development approval potentially enlarges the cost bank. Every approved project creates new opportunities for cost escalation, questionable allocations, and expenses that may later become disputed. Yet the State has demonstrated that it lacks either the will, the urgency, or the institutional capacity to resolve even the first major cost-recovery audit.

That should alarm every Guyanese.

A government that cannot settle a US $ 214 million dispute from the earliest audit period cannot credibly assure the country that it is effectively policing billions upon billions of dollars in later ExxonMobil expenditures. If the administration cannot close out an audit involving US $1.6 billion, what confidence should the public have in its oversight of the more than US $26 billion covered by the subsequent audits?

This is not a technical inconvenience. It is a direct threat to Guyana’s national patrimony.

The Cost of Delay Is Paid by Guyanese

Under the Production Sharing Agreement, ExxonMobil and its partners can recover eligible petroleum expenses from oil revenues before profits are shared. Therefore, every dollar that is improperly charged, insufficiently examined, or improperly allowed into the cost bank is a dollar that reduces Guyana’s available profit oil.

The US $214 million dispute is not merely an accounting entry. It represents money that could support hospitals, schools, drainage, sea defense, roads, water systems, electricity upgrades, housing, wages, and local economic development.

And that is before considering the wider implications of the unresolved audit process.

The longer the Government delays, the more difficult the accountability exercise becomes. Personnel change. Records become harder to interrogate. Corporate structures evolve. Projects multiply. The volume of claims grows exponentially. An administration that cannot establish a prompt, transparent, and credible system for audit resolution is creating conditions under which the country’s financial exposure will deepen year after year.

The public is being asked to accept assurances while being denied documents.

Why has the full US $7.2 billion audit not been clearly and comprehensively published? Why has the Government withheld the US $19.6 billion audit report received since May 2025 ? What specific costs were disputed? What was ExxonMobil’s response? Which sums were accepted, reduced, rejected, or carried forward? What steps has the Government taken to protect Guyana from further questionable cost recovery?

These are not unreasonable questions. They are the minimum questions that any responsible government must answer.

EPA Has a Responsibility Too

The Environmental Protection Agency cannot behave as though environmental permits exist in a vacuum, detached from the wider public-interest obligations surrounding petroleum development.

The EPA has authority through its permitting and approval functions. It assesses applications for new developments, production activities, environmental authorizations, modifications, and compliance requirements. It can impose conditions, demand information, require compliance with applicable laws and permits, and ensure that decisions serve the public interest.

Before additional projects, fields, and production expansions are approved, the country must be satisfied that the State has an effective system to monitor the financial consequences of those approvals.

It is not responsible governance to permit a continuous escalation of extraction while the Government remains incapable of resolving the foundational dispute over whether hundreds of millions of United States dollars were properly charged to Guyana in the first place.

No responsible regulator should ignore the fact that each new approval can increase the scale of cost recovery and the complexity of oversight. The EPA, the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Guyana Revenue Authority, the Ministry of Finance, and every other relevant agency must understand that weak financial oversight undermines the national interest just as surely as weak environmental oversight does.

Guyana cannot afford a regulatory system that approves first and audits later—especially when “later” means five years, six years, or perhaps never. We need to let Exxon know that it is our priority to clear up  the fiscal backlog before any further approvals.

This Is Administrative Failure

Article 26 of the petroleum agreement is clear. If the parties cannot agree on a sole expert within 30 days, the ICC is to appoint one. The expert should then seek to provide an opinion within 30 days of appointment, and no later than 60 days.

Yet the Government allowed the selection process itself to drag on for more than a year, long after the contractual timeline had expired. The public deserves an explanation for this delay.

Who proposed the experts? Which candidates were rejected? Why were they rejected? Did the Government invoke the ICC process immediately after the deadline elapsed? If not, why not? What instructions were given to the Government’s legal and technical teams? How much money has Guyana spent managing this dispute? What is the Government’s final position on each component of the US $214.4 million in questioned costs?

These questions go to competence, transparency, and accountability.

The administration cannot continue to shelter behind vague statements that it is “working with Exxon” or that the matter is “before the ICC.” Guyanese have heard these formulations for years while the oil sector expands at breathtaking speed.

A strong government would have pursued a swift resolution, published the audit reports, explained the disputed sums, reported regularly to the public, strengthened its audit and legal capacity, and ensured that new project approvals were accompanied by enforceable safeguards.

Instead, the country has been given secrecy, delay, procedural drift, and reassurance without documentation.

Guyana Must Demand a Moratorium on Further Approvals

The Government must immediately publish the complete audit reports for the 2018–2020 and  subsequent audit periods, including the findings, disputed costs, ExxonMobil’s responses, and the Government’s determinations.

It must also disclose the full record of the US $214 million dispute and commit to public updates once the ICC appoints the sole expert.

Most importantly, the Government and EPA should pause approvals for new ExxonMobil field developments and major production expansions until Guyana can demonstrate that it has a functioning, transparent, timely, and independent audit-resolution mechanism.

This is not a call to shut down the petroleum sector. It is a demand that Guyana stop governing its most valuable resource through blind trust, delayed audits, and secret reports.The country cannot continue granting access to new oil wealth while remaining unable to determine whether ExxonMobil was entitled to recover money from Guyana’s first bill.

Every new project approved before this accountability crisis is corrected sends the same troubling message: ExxonMobil’s expansion is urgent, but Guyana’s oversight is optional.

That is not partnership. It is surrender.

The PPP administration must choose whether it will act as a guardian of Guyana’s petroleum wealth or as a passive bystander while the country’s inheritance is placed beyond meaningful scrutiny.

 

An Inquiry That Cannot Reach Its Own Evidence

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

 An Inquiry That Cannot Reach Its Own Evidence

OPINION BY : Hem Kumar October 2026

On Wednesday the Chairman of the MV Barima Commission told the country that the Commission is “not an arm of the Government.” Within hours, answering a question on raising the ferry, he said orally that this lies outside the Commission’s powers. Those statements are strong on the language of independence and thin on mechanisms. Most of the red flags are in what it leaves out.

Both cannot comfortably describe a body whose job is to establish what sank a vessel. Independence is not something an inquiry declares. It is something it holds, and it is measured by three things: control of its evidence, its record, and its report. On its first day the Commission held none of them.

Independence is not something an inquiry declares. It is something it holds.

The Evidence

The wreck is the central exhibit. The Commission says it cannot award the salvage contract or vet the contractor. Yet Dr Jasionowski told families he has met the salvage team personally, expects daily reports from it, and named BK International before any government announcement did. The NPTAB has since confirmed the award. Royston Frank, who lost his son Rawle, a crew member, put the families’ position plainly: they “don’t know nothing that is going on.”

A body that disclaims authority over the salvage while sitting inside its information loop has the worst of both positions. It cannot protect the evidence, and it will be tied to whatever happens to it. We have argued that the Commission should hold binding approval over any contractor. It now says it does not. So the questions fall to the Government and the NPTAB. Who bid, at what price, on what evaluation, and what did the board see? We have documented a pre-tender invitation to a different contractor and a sealed bidder list. The public has not been told how that process ended in this award.

The Commission is right that it cannot freeze its other work while the vessel lies on the seabed. It also deserves credit on scope. The Chairman told families that institutions responsible for ferry services will be examined for systemic failure, and fleet-wide document requests have gone out. But those requests were sent only last week, ten weeks after the swearing-in, while the stated goal of “about six months” runs against an exhibit still underwater.

The Record

The opening statement says the Rules of Procedure have been adopted and published. Three pages later it concedes that the website is not ready and that the Terms of Reference and Rules can be had by emailing the Secretary, at a Gmail address on the letterhead. Both cannot be true. A public inquiry that asks the public to email for its own mandate has no public record yet. Hearings open on Wednesday, October 14. The record must exist before the first witness does.

The Report

The statement says the report will be delivered “to him,” the President. It makes no promise that the report, or any interim recommendation, will ever be published or tabled. The President appointed all five commissioners alone, and the Secretary who runs witness intake and standing applications has links we have already documented.

The Chairman asks the public to trust the process. A process whose findings travel to one reader, with no disclosure commitment, gives the public little to trust.

What the Statement Leaves Out

It names two departments, not the ministry above them or the ministers who answered for them. It says nothing of the three crew members charged two days before the Commission was sworn in, or of how that prosecution will interact with the evidence the Commission needs. It offers no declarations of interest. And ten weeks on, no credible source has confirmed how many people were aboard, so the toll is reported as dozens confirmed dead, more than thirty missing, and by some accounts more than a hundred in all. The Commission’s own scope lists passenger numbers and manifests. It should say when it will publish a verified count.

None of this proves the outcome is fixed. The Chairman says he has no predetermined view, and the test of that is conduct. So we set the test now.

Our Demands

  • Publish the Terms of Reference, Rules of Procedure, Presidential Order and all instrument dates before Wednesday’s hearing.
  • Commit in writing to publish the final report, and any interim recommendations, in full on receipt.
  • Publish declarations of interest from all five commissioners and the Secretary. Commissioner Alfonso should state on the record whether she or her firm has any relationship with BK International or any other bidder, given her stated salvage experience.
  • Have the NPTAB and MARAD publish the bidders, prices, evaluation and award date for the salvage.
  • Place the recovery under a published chain-of-custody protocol, with independent observers and a family representative present.
  • Publish a verified account of everyone aboard: the dead, the rescued and the missing.

Until they do publish the above requested , we will deem the Commission’s inquiry not as formal  proceedings but as mere performance.

— The Board

A Candidacy Undone by Its Own Words

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

 A Candidacy Undone by Its Own Words

OPINION BY :Hem Kumar October 2026

Guyana’s UN Envoy’s  latest intervention is not the mark of a principled diplomat rising above politics. It is the reflex of a candidate whose judgment, restraint and understanding of the office she seeks are now seriously in doubt.

Ambassador Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett’s declaration that, if her conduct and pronouncements are used against her candidacy for United Nations Secretary-General, “we will see where the UN is heading,” is as revealing as it is alarming.

It is not the language of a diplomat seeking to build consensus across a fractured world. It is not the language of a prospective Secretary-General who must command the confidence of competing powers, divided regions and states with deeply conflicting national interests. It is the language of confrontation—an unmistakable drawing of a line in the sand by someone who appears to have forgotten that diplomacy requires the capacity to work the entire field.

The Secretary-General cannot be a partisan standard-bearer for one bloc, one ideology or one set of preferred conflicts. The office demands discipline, balance, discretion and a demonstrable commitment to applying international law consistently—not selectively, loudly and politically when the issue is Gaza, but quietly or not at all when grave human-rights concerns arise closer to home.

Rodrigues-Birkett says every word she uttered was spoken on behalf of Guyana and its Government. That admission makes the problem more—not less—serious. A candidate for the UN’s highest office must demonstrate independence of mind and the moral authority to confront abuses wherever they occur. She cannot credibly present herself as a global guardian of peace and international law while appearing unwilling to speak with comparable urgency about the suffering of Indigenous Guyanese in the recent tragedy in Region.1

Where was this same uncompromising conviction when an inordinate number of Indigenous citizens—people from her own wider Indigenous community—were caught up in the MV Barima tragedy? Where was the public insistence on accountability? Where was the international-law rhetoric? Where was the demand for transparent investigation, justice for victims, and consequences for those responsible?

The troubling contrast cannot be ignored. Gaza rightly deserves global concern, humanitarian protection and adherence to international law. But Indigenous lives in Guyana are not lesser lives. Their pain cannot be treated as politically inconvenient, locally manageable or unworthy of the same moral vocabulary that is deployed so forcefully on international platforms.

If genocide is the standard by which the Ambassador measures state conduct abroad, then alleged state-sponsored atrocities, abuses and failures of protection at home must also attract scrutiny of equal seriousness.

Human rights cannot be a foreign-policy accessory—worn prominently at the United Nations and discarded when it becomes uncomfortable for the Government one represents.

That is the fundamental indictment of this candidacy: inconsistency.

Rodrigues-Birkett seeks to lead an institution founded on universality, yet her public record increasingly suggests selective outrage. She seeks to be custodian of the UN Charter, yet her posture reflects political allegiance more than the detached, steady-handed leadership required to preserve dialogue among states that do not agree with her.

A Secretary-General must be able to speak to Israel without becoming a political antagonist; to speak to Palestine without diminishing Palestinian suffering; to engage Washington, Beijing, Moscow, African states, Caribbean nations and the Global South without converting the office into an ideological pulpit.

The task is not to win applause from one side of an international dispute. It is to keep every side at the table long enough to avert war, reduce suffering and create space for peace.

Rodrigues-Birkett’s response to concerns over her candidacy does not reassure. It suggests that those who question her suitability are somehow exposing a UN that has lost its way. But the question is not whether international law should be defended. Of course it should. The question is whether she possesses the impartiality, temperament and diplomatic breadth to lead the United Nations at its most perilous moment.

Her own words supply the answer.

She has demonstrated a penchant for partisanship where the office demands neutrality. She has adopted a confrontational public posture where the job requires persuasion. And she has failed to establish that her concern for human rights is equally urgent when the victims are Indigenous Guyanese and the scrutiny turns toward the administration whose policies she has represented.

The image now emerging is not of an independent global leader prepared to hold all power to account. It is of a political representative whose moral certainty rises in proportion to the distance between the crisis and the Government to which she owes her position.

That is not statesmanship. It is not principled multilateralism. And it is certainly not the standard required of a United Nations Secretary-General.

The 592 Guardian therefore states unequivocally:                

Ambassador Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett is unfit for the top job at the United Nations. The world body needs a unifier, an honest broker and a defender of human dignity without geographic, racial, political or partisan qualification. Her record and her latest remarks show that she is not that leader.

She simply lacks the diplomatic statecraft, skill set, and temperament required to navigate the UN Secretariat effectively across its many distinct roles.

 

When Sentences Become Negotiable – for Govt Aligned Affiliates

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

 When Sentences Become Negotiable – for Govt Aligned Affiliates

OPINION BY: Hem Kumar October 2026

Guyana cannot credibly proclaim the rule of law while court-ordered custody appears to become optional for persons believed to enjoy political protection. The unresolved detention of Kevon Lorrimer, coming amid public questions over Daniel Seeram’s custody, warrants immediate, documented answers—not denials, deflection, or silence.

But this is precisely why the matter is so consequential. When the state declines to provide a clear account of the custody of convicted and remanded affiliates , it creates the conditions in which suspicion flourishes and public faith in judicial independence deteriorates.  

The remedy is not rhetoric; it is transparent, verifiable disclosure and strict compliance with the court’s order.

The question is no longer only whether Daniel Seeram should receive bail. The High Court has ruled that his judicial-review application did not meet the required legal threshold, leaving the Magistrate’s remand order intact. In any jurisdiction governed by law rather than access, that should settle the immediate question of custody: a convicted man who has been remanded remains in lawful custody unless and until a competent court orders otherwise.

Yet the public is now confronted by an extraordinary uncertainty. If no evidence can be produced that Seeram has been admitted to the designated prison facility—or transferred to another lawful custodial location under a valid authority—the state must explain precisely where he is, under whose custody, and on what legal basis.

A remand order cannot become a suggestion when it concerns a man with a state appointment, proximity to power, or political value.

We must be careful with our language: unexplained custody arrangements do not, by themselves, prove executive interference. But silence, opacity and special administrative treatment are the fertile ground in which democratic decay takes root. Where court orders are visibly enforced against ordinary citizens but become uncertain when politically connected officials are involved, the law begins to acquire two faces—one stern for the powerless, another accommodating for the protected.

And where does this leave the aggrieved party? She is entitled not only to a guilty verdict, but to equal and meaningful execution of the orders that follow it. A victim impact statement cannot restore public confidence if the state cannot—or will not—show that the convicted man is being held in accordance with the court’s direction.

In a country that says it is confronting domestic violence and femicide, justice cannot end at conviction and dissolve in the corridors of custody.

This is not yet proof of autocracy. It is, however, a warning flare. The next phase of authoritarianism is not always announced by soldiers or suspended elections. Sometimes it begins when lawful orders become negotiable for the connected, when institutions refuse to account for their actions, and when women are left to wonder whether the law will protect them equally once power decides that accountability is inconvenient.

The gravest issue is not that either man has legal rights. Every accused and convicted person does. The issue is whether, after a court has spoken, there is a separate administrative channel through which politically connected individuals are cushioned from the consequences imposed on everyone else.

A nine-month prison sentence is not a recommendation. A remand order is not a polite request. Once the relevant warrant is issued and a convicted person is in police custody, the machinery of justice is expected to move: custody must be regularised, records maintained, and the person delivered to the lawful correctional authority to begin the sentence.

That is the ordinary expectation in any jurisdiction that claims fidelity to law.

The unresolved detention of Kevon Lorrimer, coming amid public questions over Daniel Seeram’s custody, warrants immediate, documented answers—not denials, deflection, or silence.

Yet the public has been told that Lorrimer—described as a governing-party activist in Linden—remained in police custody after being apprehended, despite having been sentenced in his absence more than two weeks earlier. Senior police officials reportedly could not explain the delay. If accurate, that is not a minor administrative oversight.

It raises the disturbing possibility that the execution of a criminal sentence can be delayed by influence rather than governed by law.

The matter cannot be examined in isolation. It comes against the background of serious public concern regarding the custodial status of Daniel Seeram, a senior state-security official convicted of assault causing actual bodily harm to his former wife and remanded pending sentencing.

In both matters, the public is not entitled to gossip or political theatre. It is entitled to records, timelines, lawful explanations and institutional accountability.

The authorities should answer, plainly:

♦ When was Lorrimer arrested, and under what warrant?

♦ When was the Prison Service notified that he was in custody?

♦ Was a commitment warrant issued, and on what date?

♦ Why was he kept at a police facility rather than transferred promptly to the designated prison authority?

♦ Who made, authorized, or approved the decision to delay his transfer?

♦ Was any minister, political operative, senior police officer, or other state official involved in discussions concerning his custody?

♦ Has Lorrimer now been transferred to prison, and if so, precisely when?

♦ What written record exists to show that the sentence has been lawfully executed?

♦ In Seeram’s case, where is he being held, under what authority, and what records establish compliance with the court’s remand order?

These are not opposition questions. They are rule-of-law questions.

A government cannot treat criminal sentences as stern commands for the poor and inconveniences for its associates. When an ordinary Guyanese misses a court date, police action can be swift and unforgiving. Yet where there is political proximity, the country is asked to tolerate unexplained administrative delay, opaque custody arrangements and a silence that invites the very suspicion officials should be working to dispel.

That is how public faith is corroded. Not only by a court ruling overturned in dramatic fashion, but by smaller acts of institutional accommodation: the unexplained day in a police station, the delayed prison transfer, the unreturned call, the missing record, the official who says nothing because someone powerful may be displeased by the truth.

The victims and complainants in criminal matters are watching. So are women reporting domestic abuse. So are ordinary citizens who have learned, often painfully, that the law can be swift when it chooses. They deserve assurance that conviction has meaning and that an order of remand or imprisonment is not weakened by party colors, private access or political usefulness.

This pattern, if substantiated, does more than indict a government for favoritism. It places the professionalism of police officers, prison officers, court clerks and every public servant involved in the criminal-justice chain under a cruel and corrosive strain. It asks them to honour the law in public while accommodating exceptions in private. That is not administration. It is institutional degradation.

This  is a warning  that has far reaching implications beyond the borders of Guyana

International investors, development partners, diplomatic missions and businesses entering Guyana’s expanding economy should pay close attention—not because Guyana is beyond repair, but because legal predictability is the foundation of every serious investment environment.

Capital can tolerate many risks: market fluctuation, infrastructure gaps, commodity cycles and logistical challenges. What it cannot price easily is a system in which the practical operation of justice appears dependent on who has proximity to political power. Investors need confidence that contracts will be enforced, regulators will act consistently, disputes will be decided impartially, and court orders will not be selectively honored.

The message Guyana must send is not that powerful people can make inconvenience disappear. It must be that public authority is bound by law, that every court order is executed transparently, and that the police and Prison Service answer first to the Constitution—not to a party, a minister, or a politically useful friend.

If the Government believes the concerns are unfounded, it has the simplest remedy available: publish the lawful records, explain the timelines, identify the responsible authorities and demonstrate compliance with the courts.

Until then, every unexplained delay becomes a warning. Every missing answer becomes evidence of a system under strain. And every appearance of special treatment tells Guyanese—and the world—that justice may be blind only when it is looking at the powerless.

Guyana’s Development Bank: A public lender or the PPP’s electoral wallet?

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

 Guyana’s Development Bank: A public lender or the PPP’s electoral wallet?

OPINION BY : Hem Kumar October 2026 

Brazil’s first-round vote is a warning: economic progress is not enough

Brazil’s presidential election has delivered a chastening result for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He remains very much in contention ahead of the 25 October runoff. But Flávio Bolsonaro’s first-place finish, with roughly 47% to Lula’s 45%, has exposed the fragility of the incumbent’s political coalition and the enduring force of Bolsonarismo.

The immediate temptation is to treat this as a polling failure. That would be too easy. Polls broadly anticipated a close contest and a second round, even if they expected Lula to lead. The more important story is the apparent late movement of voters from smaller rightwing candidacies towards Bolsonaro—a strategic decision to concentrate opposition to Lula before the runoff rather than after it.

That shift changes the political atmosphere. Bolsonaro’s lead is narrow, but it gives him momentum, validates his campaign’s claim to represent an ascendant conservative bloc and raises the pressure on Lula to demonstrate that he can still expand beyond his existing base. The Liberal Party’s wider strength in congressional contests reinforces that message: this was not merely a personal result, but evidence of a resilient and organized right.

It would be wrong, however, to accept Bolsonaro’s success as a clean endorsement of renewal or probity. His campaign has prospered amid the Banco Master affair, a scandal that has implicated figures across Brazilian public life and intensified public distrust of institutions. Bolsonaro himself has faced allegations concerning money sought from the bank’s former owner for a film project about his father; he denies wrongdoing.

Brazil’s presidential election offers Guyana a warning that should not be ignored. The Banco Master scandal has shown how quickly a financial institution becomes politically toxic when private influence, public power and electoral ambition collide.

In Brazil, allegations involving bankers, politicians and senior judicial figures have deepened the public conviction that there is one system for ordinary citizens and another for the well connected.

Guyana is now building an institution that could either support genuine national development or entrench precisely that culture of political favour.

The Guyana Development Bank has been launched with the promise of zero-interest, zero-collateral loans—up to $3 million—for small businesses and citizens who cannot obtain conventional financing. Properly administered, that mission is defensible. Farmers, vendors, young entrepreneurs, manufacturers and struggling families need access to affordable capital. Commercial banks have too often treated small borrowers as risks rather than contributors to national growth. 

But public lending is never neutral where political power controls the gate.

The essential question is not whether Guyana needs a development bank. It does. The question is whether the PPP-C has created a national financial institution or a taxpayer-funded mechanism for political patronage in the run-up to the next election.

The answer lies in the governance structure.

The Finance Minister holds the power to appoint the bank’s directors, including the chairperson and deputy chairperson. There is no meaningful bipartisan process, no parliamentary confirmation, no independent appointments commission and no evident public test of whether candidates are politically neutral, professionally qualified or free from conflicts of interest.

That minister is not a disinterested administrator standing outside electoral politics. He is one of the most important figures in the PPP-C’s governing machinery and is widely viewed as a possible central figure in its next electoral configuration. He is therefore positioned as both driver and conductor of an institution that can distribute valuable state-backed benefits to thousands of voters

This is where the matter becomes grave.

The inaugural board does not project independence from the executive or the ruling party. Its composition includes persons publicly associated with the governing establishment, including a sitting PPP-C parliamentarian, a senior Finance Ministry official and a member of the President’s Youth Advisory Council.

No allegation of criminality is required to recognize the problem. The problem is structural: the bank begins its existence under the shadow of political alignment rather than public independence.

The government may insist that every appointee is qualified. That is beside the point. Public confidence depends not merely on competence, but on demonstrable independence. A development bank handling billions in public resources cannot resemble an extension of the ruling party, particularly when it offers loans that may be transformative to recipients and politically invaluable to those who can claim credit for them.

Zero-interest and zero-collateral loans are not ordinary benefits. They are extraordinary state concessions. They can rescue a business, create dependence, reward loyalty and generate a powerful sense of obligation. In the wrong hands, they are not development finance. They are patronage with an application form.

This is the point Guyana must absorb from Brazil. Corruption is not confined to cash-filled envelopes, kickbacks or a plainly illegal contract. It also exists in the quiet conversion of state resources into political advantage: preferential access, opaque discretion, insider connections, selective enforcement and public institutions whose leaders answer more readily to party authority than to the public.

A bank built this way will not have to issue a single visibly improper loan before public suspicion takes root. Every approval to a party activist, contractor, donor, politically connected businessperson or community leader will invite the same question: was this creditworthiness—or political usefulness?

The PPP-C should not be offended by those questions. It should welcome them and answer them through law, disclosure and independent oversight. If the bank is genuinely designed for national development, then the government should immediately require publication of all eligibility criteria, credit-scoring rules, loan approvals, beneficiaries, interest terms, repayment schedules, defaults, restructurings and write-offs.

It should bar ministers, parliamentarians, party executives, senior public servants and their close relatives or controlled companies from receiving loans. It should require directors and senior staff to disclose assets, business interests and political affiliations. It should establish an independent credit committee, submit the bank to Auditor General scrutiny, and require quarterly reports and substantive examination by the National Assembly.

Above all, no Finance Minister should possess unchecked authority to populate the board of an institution empowered to dispense public money on terms unavailable in the ordinary market

Brazil’s lesson is clear: when public institutions are perceived as controlled by political insiders, scandal does not remain confined to the individuals named in an investigation.

It contaminates the legitimacy of the entire democratic order.

Guyana’s oil wealth has made the stakes even higher. The country has resources sufficient to uplift citizens and diversify the economy—or sufficient to construct a more sophisticated patronage state. The Development Bank will help reveal which path the country has chosen. The government must decide whether this bank belongs to Guyana, or to the PPP-C.

Gunboat Diplomacy: Without the Guns and Boats

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA 

Gunboat Diplomacy: Without the Guns and Boats

OPINION BY: Hem Kumar October 2026

Washington has found that tariffs, sanctions and visa revocations do what cruisers once did, and Guyana should understand what that means for a small state in the middle of it.

The gunboat was never really about the gun. It was about the message that a small state’s choices had a price, set elsewhere and collected without a declaration of war. What has changed in the Western Hemisphere is that the gunboat no longer needs a hull. A tariff schedule, a Treasury designation, a revoked visa and a conditional credit line carry the same message, at lower cost and with a deniability the old navies never had.

Pedro Abramovay of Open Society makes a useful distinction in his recent essay on the future of multilateralism. The post-Cold War order, he argues, was built for a unipolar moment, tolerant of minimal states and austerity, and deaf to demands for shared prosperity. It is now being replaced not by a vacuum but by a contest between two models.

One is a multilateralism of strong states that insist cooperation be grounded in national and regional priorities. The other is raw might-makes-right, which treats sovereignty as something to be rationed. Latin America is where that contest is playing out in real time.

Coercion as an electoral instrument

The rightward drift across the hemisphere is real, but the causal story deserves care. Crime, inflation and exhausted incumbents have moved voters in Latin America for years, and no honest editorial should pretend Washington invented those grievances. What coercion adds is an accelerant and a price tag. When a government’s creditworthiness, tariff exposure or leaders’ travel documents depend on its alignment, an election stops being only a domestic choice.

It becomes a referendum on whether the country can afford to be defiant. Voters understand that arithmetic even when no one states it. Support for aligned candidates, whether through endorsements, rescue facilities or a sudden softening of sanctions, tells the electorate which outcome the powerful will reward.

This is the real innovation. Old interventionism needed a coup. The new version needs only to make dissent expensive and compliance visible, and then let the domestic politics do the rest. It leaves no occupation to resist, no dictator to denounce, and often a legitimately elected government at the end of the process. That makes it harder to name and harder to fight.

What the Venezuela precedent teaches

Abramovay lists, among the unravelings of the order, the seizure of a sitting-then-former Venezuelan president by the United States. For Guyana this cannot be filed as a distant event. It is the demonstration that the outer limit of coercion is now unmarked. If a neighbour’s head of state can be removed by force, the line between pressure and invasion has been redrawn by the party doing the pressing.

Guyana’s official posture has been to treat this as favorable. Venezuela’s claim on the Essequibo has been the central threat to the country’s territory for decades, and a Washington willing to act decisively looks like a guarantor. But a guarantee is not a right. Protection of this kind is rented, and the landlord sets the terms.

The rent being paid

Consider what Guyana has agreed to in this period: a third-country deportee framework whose vetting, accommodation and legal basis the public cannot examine; a security architecture of memoranda on air-domain awareness; and a deep-water port at Berbice whose financing has shifted from earlier Chinese interest toward American-linked capital. Each can be defended on its own terms. Together they describe a state aligning itself, and doing so without Parliament having meaningfully weighed in.

A legislature that has sat only a handful of times in nearly thirteen months is not a body that scrutinizes the terms of a hemisphere-shaping bargain.

Here Abramovay’s argument cuts against the government’s own instincts. His claim is that states able to deliver at home have more voice abroad. Guyana’s bargaining position is strongest not when it signs fastest but when its institutions are strong enough to say what it will not sign.

Secrecy is not a negotiating advantage. It is a signal to the counterparty that no domestic constraint exists, and counterparties price that in.

The oil state’s particular exposure

There is a second vulnerability. Guyana’s economy rests on a single resource under a contract negotiated in 2016, operated by a company whose home government is the same one now wielding the tariffs. A small state whose revenue, security guarantee and migration arrangements all run through one capital has no leverage left to trade. That is the condition coercion exploits best, and it is the condition Guyana has built for itself.

What a strong state would do

The answer is not defiance for its own sake. Guyana has genuine security needs, and no serious person argues it should dismiss American help. The answer is to convert dependence into terms. Publish the deportee framework and legislate its limits. Table the security memoranda in the National Assembly. Treat the CARICOM and Latin American groupings as insurance rather than ceremony, since the coalitions Abramovay describes, middle powers and Global South states acting together, are the only counterweight a country of this size can assemble. And press the legal route on the border, where the International Court of Justice remains one of the few arenas in which a small state and a large one are formally equal.

The gunboat has changed form, but the lesson of the old one still holds. Small states that are seen to be unconditionally aligned are not protected. They are simply taken for granted.

 

Democracy Is More Than Elections

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Democracy Is More Than Elections

OPINION BY: Hem Kumar- October 2026

The  anniversary statement issued by Vice President Jagdeo  invites a legitimate question: can a government credibly celebrate democratic restoration while exercising power in ways that weaken the institutions democracy requires?

October 5,1992, was unquestionably a defining moment for Guyana. The end of the PNC’s long period of electoral authoritarianism restored the people’s ability to choose their government through credible elections. That achievement should be protected, not reduced to a partisan talking point.

But the restoration of democracy cannot be measured only by whether votes are cast every five years. Democracy also requires an active Parliament, constitutional restraint, accountability to the public, space for dissent, independent institutions, transparent government, and meaningful opportunities for citizens and opposition representatives to question those who govern.

It is therefore striking that the PPP now invokes the very Constitution it once repeatedly condemned as defective, exclusionary and in need of fundamental reform.

For years, the PPP argued that Guyana’s constitutional arrangements concentrated excessive power in the Executive Presidency and failed to produce inclusive governance. Constitutional reform was presented as an urgent national necessity—not merely an academic exercise. Yet, once returned to office, the party appears to have discovered the political usefulness of the same architecture it had criticized so sharply.

While the PPP-C rightly condemned the attempt to overturn the 2020 election results, its record in office must also be judged by the health of Parliament as an institution. Guyanese have repeatedly raised concerns about long recesses, limited sittings and the extent to which the National Assembly has been permitted to function as a vigorous forum for scrutiny of executive power. A democracy requires more than elections; it requires a Parliament that meets regularly, debates freely and holds the Government accountable.

Democracy Cannot Be Selective

October 5, 1992, remains a defining date in Guyana’s history. It marked the return of credible elections after decades in which the people’s right to choose their government had been profoundly compromised.

But democracy is not merely the holding of elections or the installation of a government.  

That is why the PPP-C’s anniversary statement carries such crass irony. The party condemns the PNC’s era of party paramountcy and celebrates the constitutional order that followed 1992, yet it has repeatedly found political comfort in the very constitutional arrangements it once denounced as defective, excessively centralized and in need of urgent reform.

Constitutional Convenience

For years, the PPP argued that Guyana’s Constitution vested too much authority in the Executive Presidency and did not adequately secure inclusive governance, shared decision-making or genuine national unity.

Those arguments did not disappear because the PPP-C returned to office. If anything, Guyana’s oil wealth, expanding public expenditure and concentration of decision-making make constitutional reform more urgent now than at any point before.

Yet the promised reform of the constitutional order has again been deferred, while the Government enjoys the utility of the same powerful executive structure it once criticized. That is the contradiction: condemning constitutional excess when out of office, then embracing constitutional convenience when in office.

Parliament Is Not Optional

The issue is not that Parliament did not convene after the 2020 elections. It did. The issue is whether Parliament has been allowed to operate as a meaningful, consistent and independent check on executive authority.

The current Parliament has had only four named sittings over more than 13 months. More troubling, those sittings have been principally driven by Government business rather than by a broad parliamentary agenda that reflects the urgent concerns of citizens, communities, workers, pensioners, farmers, small businesses and the opposition.

A Parliament reduced to a forum for the Government to process its own legislative program is not functioning at its democratic best. The National Assembly is not meant to be an occasional administrative extension of the Executive. It is meant to be the people’s House: a place where ministers are questioned, public spending is examined, contracts and policies are challenged, petitions are heard, and the concerns of every region can be placed on the national record.

Government business is necessary. But it cannot be the only business that matters.

The Democratic Test

The PPP-C is correct that the 2020 election crisis represented a grave threat to Guyana’s democracy. The right of Guyanese to determine their government had to be defended.

But a government that invokes democracy must also accept its continuing obligations after the election has been won. Electoral legitimacy is not a blank cheque for executive dominance, prolonged parliamentary inactivity or the marginalization of representatives elected to question and scrutinize those in power.

The democratic test is not whether a government can point to its electoral mandate. Every government can do that. The test is whether it permits institutions to operate freely when they may be inconvenient, critical or politically uncomfortable.

Oil Wealth Demands Oversight

This is particularly important in an oil-producing Guyana. The country is now managing unprecedented revenues, major infrastructure programs, large procurement contracts, land allocations, environmental questions and far-reaching development decisions.

Those matters cannot be left substantially to Cabinet announcements, ministerial statements and executive discretion. They require continuous parliamentary examination and public disclosure.

Guyana does not need a Parliament that appears only when the Government requires legislation, supplementary funds, budgets or approval for its program. It needs a Parliament that sits regularly and has the time, tools and institutional independence to interrogate how public money is spent and whose interests are being served. 

A government cannot credibly speak of defending democracy while treating Parliament—the central institution of representative democracy—as optional. Elections give a government the authority to govern. Parliament subjects that authority to examination, challenge and public accountability.

The Executive may enjoy a parliamentary majority, but that does not mean the National Assembly should be sidelined. In fact, a commanding majority makes regular parliamentary oversight even more necessary, not less.

Constitutional Convenience

The central irony is hard to avoid. The PPP-C condemns the former PNC administration’s record of authoritarianism and party paramountcy, yet it has embraced practices that reflect the same unhealthy governing instinct: the elevation of executive control above institutional accountability.

No serious observer is suggesting that the present era is identical to the pre-1992 period. The histories, circumstances and scale of abuses are not interchangeable. But democratic decline does not always arrive through the open cancellation of elections. It can also develop through gradual normalization:

⇒ Parliament is delayed, marginalized or made perfunctory.

⇒ Major decisions are made without adequate public consultation.

⇒ Constitutional reform is repeatedly promised but indefinitely deferred.

⇒  State resources and information are controlled from the center.

⇒ Critics are dismissed as enemies rather than treated as participants in democratic life.

⇒ Transparency becomes a slogan rather than a governing discipline.

A democracy can retain elections and still suffer from an imbalance of power that undermines public confidence.

 A Promise Deferred

The PPP-C statement says it will ensure “the transparent management of public resources” and fight corruption “in all of its manifestations.” Those are welcome commitments—but commitments demand measurable proof.

Guyana’s oil wealth makes constitutional reform, parliamentary scrutiny and institutional independence more urgent than ever. Vast public revenues, major infrastructure contracts, land allocations, procurement decisions and development priorities cannot be left substantially to executive discretion. The larger the public purse, the stronger the guardrails must be.

A serious democratic agenda would include:

⇒ A clear, public timetable for constitutional reform.

⇒ Regular and robust sittings of the National Assembly.

⇒ Stronger parliamentary committees with real access to records, contracts and officials.

⇒ Full transparency in public procurement, oil-revenue management and major development projects.

⇒ Protection for independent media, civil society, whistleblowers and dissenting voices.

⇒ Reforms that reduce excessive concentration of authority in the Executive Presidency.

 The Test of October 5

The PPP-C is entitled to commemorate October 5, 1992. But it cannot own that date while ignoring its deeper meaning.

Democracy was not restored so that one party could replace another at the commanding heights of the state. It was restored so that no government—regardless of party, race, history or electoral majority—could operate beyond sustained public scrutiny.

The true tribute to the struggle for democracy is not another anniversary statement condemning the sins of yesterday’s rulers. It is the willingness to submit today’s rulers to the same democratic standards.

Guyana must reject party paramountcy in every form: the crude authoritarianism of the past and the constitutional convenience, executive overreach and institutional neglect of the present.

October 5 Belongs to Guyanese

The PPP-C is entitled to commemorate October 5, 1992. But that date belongs to all Guyanese—not to one party and not to any government.

Its meaning is larger than the defeat of one administration and the rise of another. It is the principle that no party, however popular or historically significant, should be permitted to dominate the State without meaningful oversight.

Guyana rejected party paramountcy in 1992. It must reject every modern form of it now: executive overreach, constitutional convenience, weakened parliamentary scrutiny and the belief that an electoral majority relieves a government of its duty to answer to the people

Part Two: Brazil’s Election Is a Test of Guyana’s Strategic Preparedness

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA 

 Part Two: Brazil’s Election Is a Test of Guyana’s Strategic Preparedness

Lula or Bolsonaro, Guyana Needs Guarantees—Not Promises

Guyana’s future cannot depend on the goodwill of Washington, Brasília or Caracas. It requires a disciplined foreign policy that treats territorial integrity as non-negotiable, diversifies security and trading relationships, and converts diplomatic assurances into transparent, enforceable commitments.

Brazil may accept US deterrence as useful, but it is unlikely to accept Guyana becoming a permanent American strategic outpost—or the Essequibo controversy becoming commercial currency in a Washington-Caracas settlement.

The danger for Guyana is that Brazil’s resistance to US dominance and Washington’s appetite for transactions could converge around the same word: “negotiation.” Yet for Guyana, negotiation cannot mean reopening territory that is before the ICJ or converting sovereign rights into the price of regional calm.

Guyana should watch Brazil’s presidential election with the seriousness it deserves. Brazil is not a distant Latin American giant whose politics matter only to Brazilians. It is Guyana’s neighbor, a major regional power, a vital trade route, a possible energy partner, a security stakeholder and a country whose choices can influence whether northern South America moves toward stability or deeper geopolitical contest.

But Guyana must avoid one of the oldest errors of small-state diplomacy: mistaking political affinity for national protection.

Whether Brazil returns Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva or elects Flávio Bolsonaro, Georgetown should not be seduced by slogans, ideological labels or campaign rhetoric. Guyana’s interests are too serious to be left to assumptions about who is supposedly friendlier to Washington, harder on Venezuela or more enthusiastic about regional integration.

Brazil has its own interests. It wants no war near Roraima. It does not want Venezuelan military movement across its territory. It does not want a refugee crisis, armed spillover or regional instability along its northern frontier. And it does not want Guyana’s border controversy transformed into an open arena for great-power competition.

Those interests can align with Guyana’s interests. But alignment is not the same as commitment.

Under Lula, Guyana may expect continuity, dialogue and a preference for regional diplomacy. Brasília would likely continue to oppose military escalation and favour restraint. That may be useful. But Guyana must be alert: the language of dialogue can become dangerous when it is used to preserve the fiction that Guyana must negotiate territory already governed by the 1899 Award and before the ICJ.

Peace is not achieved by rewarding an aggressor with a seat at the table to renegotiate another country’s borders.

Under Flávio Bolsonaro, some may assume Brazil would take a firmer line against Venezuela because of his likely closeness to President Trump and his political hostility to the Venezuelan establishment. That assumption is far from safe.

If Washington is willing to transact with Delcy Rodríguez for oil, debt, mining and political cooperation, then a Bolsonaro-aligned Brasília may ultimately mirror that same transactional logic. It could be tough in rhetoric and flexible in practice. It could denounce Venezuelan authoritarianism while supporting “regional arrangements” that pressure Guyana to soften its insistence on a final legal settlement.

Guyana must not confuse anti-Maduro rhetoric with pro-Guyana policy.

The Brazilian election therefore presents a challenge—not merely an opportunity. Georgetown must move beyond ceremonies, memoranda, promises of integration and repeated announcements of future cooperation.

Guyana needs enforceable commitments.

♦What is the actual timetable for the Linden-Lethem road corridor?

♦What financing has been secured?

♦What are the terms of customs, border facilities, freight movement and security control?

♦What precisely is contemplated on energy interconnection?

♦ Who benefits from Brazilian agricultural investment?

♦ Which companies are involved, what land is being discussed, and what protections exist for Guyanese communities, producers and public revenues?

These are not technical footnotes. They are questions of sovereignty.

Guyana cannot build its future on vague declarations about Brazil being a “strategic partner” while the public remains unable to examine the terms, timelines, investors, costs and obligations behind that partnership. Development without transparency is not strategy. It is exposure.

Nor should Guyana permit Brazil’s understandable wish for regional calm to become a mechanism for Venezuela to keep Essequibo permanently under political negotiation. Brazil has a legitimate interest in peace. Guyana has a non-negotiable right to territorial integrity. The two can coexist only if Brazil accepts that peace must be built on law—not on a compromise imposed upon the country whose territory is under claim.

Guyana should therefore seek firm commitments from whichever government emerges in Brasília:

♦ Brazil will oppose any use or threat of force against Guyana.

♦ Brazilian territory will never be used to facilitate military aggression against Guyana.

♦ Brazil will respect and support the ICJ process and the binding character of its eventual ruling.

♦ Brazil will not endorse any political formula that reopens Guyana’s sovereignty over Essequibo.

♦ Bilateral infrastructure, energy, trade and agricultural initiatives will be governed by transparent agreements, public accountability and clear benefit to Guyanese citizens.

That is the standard Guyana must set.

Brazil’s election is not a reason for Georgetown to choose sides in Brazilian politics. It is a reason for Georgetown to insist that Guyana’s interests survive any change in Brazilian politics,

Lula or Bolsonaro, Guyana must not be dependent on personal relationships, ideological sympathies or diplomatic pleasantries. The country needs written commitments, public agreements, strategic diversification and a foreign policy disciplined enough to understand one fundamental truth:

“A promise from a powerful neighbor is useful. A guarantee that protects Guyana’s territory, economy and sovereignty is indispensable.“

Brazil’s election matters to Guyana because Brazil is simultaneously a trading partner, land-link, security neighbor and regional power; yet neither Lula nor Flávio Bolsonaro should be treated as Guyana’s automatic ally. Guyana’s interests require binding commitments from Brasília, not ideological assumptions about either candidate.

This op-ed focuses on Brazil as the indispensable regional actor. It  explains why Guyana cannot afford to see Brazil merely through the lens of who is friendlier to Washington, more hostile to Caracas, or more rhetorically supportive of Guyana.

These are the  central pillars Guyana needs to ratify:

  • Brazil is central to Guyana’s trade, the Lethem corridor, agriculture, energy interconnection, border security and access to northern South American markets.
  • Brazil wants no war on its northern frontier and will resist Venezuelan military escalation.
  • But Brazil also wants regional autonomy and may resist a dominant US military or diplomatic role in its strategic neighborhood.
  • Lula may favor dialogue, mediation and regional diplomacy, which can protect peace but risk prolonging political debate over Guyana’s settled border.
  • Flávio Bolsonaro may be more aligned with Trump, but that alignment could weaken—not strengthen—Guyana’s position if Washington is simultaneously making deals with Delcy.
  • Guyana must demand clarity on the ICJ process, non-use of Brazilian territory for aggression, infrastructure delivery, cross-border trade and security cooperation.

Can Guyana turn Brazil’s geographic importance into enforceable national advantage, or will Georgetown remain dependent on changing political moods in Brasília?

 

Guyana Must Stand With Cuba’s Independent Journalists

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

Guyana Must Stand With Cuba’s Independent Journalists

OPINION BY: Hem Kumar October 2026

The imprisonment of Cuban independent journalist Henry Constantin Ferreiro should concern not only those who defend press freedom in Cuba. It should concern every Caribbean citizen who understands that democracy cannot survive where governments treat independent reporting as a form of defiance.

Henry Constantin, director of La Hora de Cuba and a regional vice president of the Inter-American Press Society, has reportedly been placed in pre-trial detention after being accused of “disobedience.” Yet the wider context cannot be ignored: Constantin is an independent journalist working in a system where the state has long treated free reporting, dissenting views, and unapproved public discussion as threats to political control.

When a government describes the exercise of basic rights as “disobedience,” it has inverted the very meaning of law. 

In a democratic society, journalism is not an act of rebellion. It is an essential public service. Journalists investigate the decisions of public officials, pursue information that powerful people may prefer to keep hidden, test official explanations against evidence, and give the public the material needed to make informed judgments.

That work may be inconvenient. It may embarrass ministers, agencies, corporations, and political parties. But inconvenience is not illegality, and criticism is not a crime.

For Guyana, the case carries a particular relevance. Our country is undergoing a profound economic and political transformation, driven largely by petroleum wealth, major infrastructure spending, foreign investment, mining, environmental questions, and high-stakes decisions over the public purse. At such a moment, public scrutiny is not optional. It is indispensable.

Guyana needs more reporting—not less—on oil revenues, production-sharing arrangements, procurement, environmental safeguards, land and mining concessions, public contracts, regulatory enforcement, conflicts of interest, and whether national development is improving the lives of ordinary citizens.

A government confident in its stewardship should not fear those questions. It should answer them.

A government that fears independent journalism will almost always try to make the journalist, rather than the repression, the issue. It will point to administrative rules, procedural allegations, vague offences, and carefully chosen criminal labels. But a legal label does not erase political reality.

When a journalist is targeted because he has persisted in informing the public outside official control, the charge may be written as “disobedience,” but the underlying offence is independence

Press Freedom Is a Regional Duty

The Caribbean is often described as a region bound by shared history, geography, and democratic aspirations. Those values mean little if we speak loudly about freedom only when abuses occur beyond our borders, or only when the victims are politically convenient.

Guyana must consistently defend the principle that no journalist should be imprisoned merely for doing journalism. This principle must apply in Cuba and throughout the Caribbean, regardless of ideology, diplomatic alliances, or political discomfort.

It must also be defended at home.

The danger does not always begin with a prison cell. It can begin with public officials vilifying reporters, restricting access to information, withholding public records, using state platforms to smear critics, threatening lawsuits to chill reporting, or treating legitimate questions as evidence of hostility to the country.

These methods may differ in severity from outright imprisonment, but they share a common purpose: to weaken independent scrutiny and teach others that silence is safer.

Guyana’s democracy must never accept that logic.

A Warning Against the Language of Control

Words matter because governments use them to shape public understanding. When wrongdoing by the powerful is exposed, the messenger is often attacked. A journalist may be called unpatriotic, malicious, politically motivated, anti-development, or opposed to national progress.

These labels are designed to shift attention away from the facts.

No citizen should have to prove loyalty to a government before being allowed to demand accountability. Patriotism is not silence in the face of possible wrongdoing. Real patriotism is insisting that a country’s wealth, laws, institutions, and future be managed honestly and in the public interest.

The purpose of journalism is not to make power comfortable. Its role is to place facts before the public, especially where institutions refuse transparency and where ordinary people are denied access to information that affects their lives.

That responsibility becomes even more important in closed political systems, where the state controls major media outlets, public institutions, communications infrastructure, and the official record of national life.

In such circumstances, an independent reporter is not simply doing a job. He or she is defending the public’s right to know.

The freedom to question government is especially vital in resource-rich states. Oil wealth can strengthen democratic institutions when decisions are transparent and citizens are fully informed. It can also deepen secrecy, patronage, and concentrated political power where scrutiny is dismissed as an obstacle to development.

That is why Guyana must protect the right to investigate, publish, criticize, and demand answers.

Stand With Henry Constantin

The Danger of Pre-Trial Detention

The use of pre-trial detention against Henry Constantin raises a grave concern. Such detention should be exceptional, necessary, proportionate, and subject to swift, meaningful judicial review. It should never become a mechanism by which a government punishes a person before trial, avoids public scrutiny, or leaves a critic in legal limbo.

A person is presumed innocent. A journalist must not be confined for weeks or months simply because the state can invoke broad accusations while delaying a fair and transparent hearing.

When the machinery of justice moves slowly for the accused but swiftly for the state, the law ceases to function as a shield for liberty. It becomes an instrument of control.

The question is therefore not simply whether an official accusation has been made. The question is whether the accusation is being used to silence independent reporting and discourage others from following the same path.

Every authoritarian government understands the deterrent value of one imprisoned journalist. The intended audience is not only the person behind bars. It is every editor, reporter, student, activist, citizen, and family member watching from outside the prison gate.

The message is clear: remain silent, or pay the price.

Henry Constantin should be released immediately and unconditionally. Pre-trial detention must not become a substitute for due process, a means of punishing a journalist without conviction, or an attempt to force him into silence or exile.

His case should remind us of a basic truth: journalism is not disobedience. The right to inform and be informed is not a gift from those in office. It belongs to the people.

Guyana, as a Caribbean democracy with a growing international profile and enormous public stakes in how its resources are governed, should stand firmly on that principle.

To report is not to rebel. To publish is not to conspire. To question power is not to commit a crime. Journalism is not disobedience. It is freedom in practice.

A society that protects journalists protects its own right to know. A society that punishes journalists for telling the truth places its freedom in danger.

 

Teach the Truth, Defend the Inheritance

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA 

Teach the Truth, Defend the Inheritance

OPINION BY: Hem Kumar October 2026

Guyana’s education system arose from colonial structures. While its curriculum has evolved since independence, many students still encounter history through frameworks that give disproportionate attention to European “discovery,” imperial administration, British institutions, plantation economics, and colonial-era milestones.The 592 Guardian ask: Who is centered in the story Guyanese children are taught about Guyana. Decolonising education does not mean hiding difficult history or teaching children to hate other peoples. It means refusing to present conquest as discovery, exploitation as development, and the colonised as passive spectators in their own homeland.

A major focus could be the treatment of the first peoples: Lokono, Kalinago, Wapichan, Makushi, Patamona, Wai Wai, Akawaio, Arekuna-Pemon, Warrau and others. This editorial argues  that Indigenous Guyanese must not appear in textbooks only at the beginning of history, followed by disappearance from the national narrative. 

Their contemporary political rights, knowledge systems, conservation practices, languages, village governance, cultural institutions, and continuing struggles over land and consent belong in modern Guyanese civic education.

Guyana stands again at a decisive historical crossroads. Vast oil reserves are producing unprecedented revenues. Gold continues to leave our soil. Foreign corporations, international financiers and political intermediaries now circle a country once dismissed as marginal, poor and strategically irrelevant.

But before Guyanese celebrate this new era as proof of national arrival, we must confront a more sobering question: have we learned to recognize the old machinery of exploitation when it returns wearing modern clothes?

Our ancestors knew that machinery well.

They encountered it in the plantation economy—a system in which land was seized, human beings were enslaved, labor was coerced and the wealth produced in Guyana was shipped outward to enrich colonial masters, absentee proprietors, merchants and the British Crown. The plantocracy did not build its fortunes through benevolence, partnership or “investment.” It accumulated wealth through a system of racial terror, theft of labor and the calculated degradation of African people. 

The story did not end with emancipation. It evolved.

After slavery, colonial power sought new pools of cheap and controlled labor. Indentureship was imposed within an economic order designed to preserve plantation profitability. Indigenous peoples endured continuing incursions upon their lands, resources and ways of life.

Across the country, communities were expected to supply labour, surrender land, absorb hardship and accept political subordination, while others determined the terms under which Guyana’s wealth would be used.

Yet Guyanese people did not submit quietly. Enslaved Africans resisted from the first day of bondage. They plotted, fled, fought, organized and rebelled. The Berbice uprising of 1763, led by Cuffy and sustained by countless others whose names history has neglected, remains a declaration that human beings cannot be reduced to property. Emancipated Africans built villages, bought land, formed institutions and fought to exercise the freedom they had been denied. Workers struggled for dignity. Communities defended culture, identity and survival. Political activists carried the fight forward into the long campaign for self-government and independence.

The rights and liberties we now possess did not arrive as gifts from empire. They were wrested from systems built to deny them. That is the inheritance Guyanese children must understand.

Burkina Faso along with several other nations in Africa and the Commonwealth decision to remove colonial terminology and colonial assumptions from its education curriculum should provoke urgent reflection in Guyana. We too must ask whether our schools still teach our history from the viewpoint of those who conquered, extracted and ruled—or from the standpoint of the people who endured, resisted, rebuilt and created this nation.

Words matter. They condition how a people understand power.

When invasion is called exploration, conquest is called discovery, dispossession is called development and exploitation is called partnership, injustice is made to appear natural. The colonized become background characters in their own history. The conqueror becomes the hero. The victim is told to be grateful for the civilization supposedly delivered at the end of a gun, a chain or a contract.

Guyana needs no curriculum of hatred. It needs a curriculum of truth.

That truth must name Indigenous dispossession. It must teach the crime of African enslavement without euphemism or apology. It must honestly explain indentureship and the economic purposes it served. It must recognize the contributions, sacrifices and political struggles of every people who made Guyana: Indigenous, African, Indian, Portuguese, Chinese, European and mixed-heritage communities

But it must do more than recount suffering. It must teach resistance, achievement, organization and agency. Our children must learn that their fore-parents were not merely acted upon. They acted. They defied the whip, challenged the plantation, bought land, formed villages, built families, defended communities, organized labor and demanded a nation of their own.

This is especially urgent in the oil age.

Guyana’s current wealth is not merely a commercial opportunity. It is a test of whether political independence has matured into economic sovereignty.

We must teach future generations how to read the arrangements through which their national patrimony is managed. They must understand royalties, profit shares, tax concessions, production agreements, environmental obligations, regulatory failures, local-content requirements, public accountability and the consequences of allowing wealth to escape while communities remain underdeveloped.

They must be taught to ask: who owns the resource? Who negotiated the terms? Who carries the risk? Who takes the profit? What remains in Guyana when the resource is gone?

These are not abstract questions. They are the modern expression of an old struggle.

The plantation class used chains, coercion and forced labour to cart away Guyana’s wealth. Today, a neo-colonial industrial order can achieve comparable outcomes through unequal agreements, corporate leverage, weak oversight, secrecy, tax arrangements and the political capture of public decision-making. The instruments are different. The danger is familiar: a country rich in resources, while its people remain spectators to the export of their own inheritance.

This is not an argument against foreign investment. Guyana needs capital, expertise, technology and trade. But partnership cannot mean surrender. Investment cannot mean that the investor acquires the lion’s share while the owner of the resource is left to manage polluted rivers, weakened institutions, inadequate infrastructure and unfulfilled promises.

A nation that does not understand its past can be deceived in its present.

The forthcoming presence of King Charles III in the Caribbean heightens the importance of this conversation. The British monarchy cannot approach the descendants of enslaved people with ceremony while avoiding its central historical responsibility.

The Crown sat atop an empire enriched by African enslavement, indentureship, plantation production and colonial extraction. Britain’s wealth was not made in isolation; but from the blood, labor and suffering of millions.

There must be no sanitized account of that record. Slavery was among the worst crimes against humanity. It was legalized theft of life, labor, family and future. Its legacy did not vanish when the formal system ended.

It lives on in the unequal distribution of land, wealth, opportunity and power across the Caribbean and the wider world.

A genuine apology is necessary because it identifies the crime and acknowledges responsibility. But words without repair, restitution and concrete redress are insufficient. They risk becoming performance—carefully managed expressions of regret designed to preserve comfort without confronting consequence.

Guyana must not permit its history to be softened for the comfort of those who benefited from it, nor must it allow its future to be negotiated in a way that repeats it.

We owe the freedom fighters, village builders, labor organizers, Indigenous defenders and anti-colonial patriots more than ceremonial remembrance. We owe them vigilance. We owe them courage. We owe them an educated citizenry capable of identifying exploitation whether it comes in the form of a plantation decree, a colonial ordinance, a mining concession or an oil contract.

Their legacy must be paid forward.

Let Guyana therefore undertake a serious, transparent and scholarly review of its curriculum. Let teachers, historians, Indigenous leaders, community organizations, students and families participate. Let the result be a national education rooted in evidence, dignity and civic consciousness—not partisan indoctrination, not ethnic exclusion, and not colonial nostalgia.

Teach our children the truth: where we came from, what was done to our peoples, how they fought back, and why sovereignty is more than a flag and an anthem.

Only a people trained to recognize exploitation in every shape and form can prevent its return.