Failure Exposed: Govt’s Bottled Water Is Admission It Cannot Provide Basic Access

/0 Comments/in , , /by
592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦ INTEGRITY JOURNALISM♦ GUYANA

Failure Exposed: Govt’s Bottled Water Is Admission It Cannot Provide Basic Access

OPINION BY: Dr. Vincent Adams                                                                                    August 2026

The Government of Guyana is known to be the first to come up with skullduggeries to camouflage its incompetence and wrongheadedness; but this unprecedented maneuver to build and operate its own bottled water plant has to take the cake as the big stunt to distract from its gross incompetence, failure, and dereliction of duty of a normal Govt to perform its paramount function of delivering a clean municipal water supply system to its citizens.

Along with clean air, clean water is the most indispensable necessity for sustaining life, but unfortunately, this Govt has botched the God-given gift of being the land of many waters; or, as the famous Poet, Samuel Coleridge puts it “water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink.” 

This desperate move signifies the Govt’s confession of its lack of ability to perform this basic function, while callously caring less about the extra arm and leg expenses to be faced by the poverty stricken making up 60% of the population, who will be forced to purchase this water, accompanied by the retrograde step of going back to the days of fetching water in bottles, then transferring to buckets and calabash for bathing, in lieu of showering.

In contrast, the minority well to do friends and families of the Boys, will continue their merry affluent life styles enjoying in-house water treatment furnishing not only clean pipe water for their showering, but also for their clean dishes and laundry.     

The Guyanese people no doubt welcomes the outcries by the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) and the Opposition against this endeavor that threatens private enterprises, and which exposes the fakery that the PPPC had somehow converted itself from communism—socialism to capitalism.

However, this unheard-of action flies in the face of a Govt’s moral imperative to guarantee a reliable and convenient pure water supply system to sustain all life and health for its people, which is far more vital than commercial interests.

Not surprisingly, the Govt openly entertains the commercial argument so as to get out of jail free by switching the conversation to distract from its obvious dereliction of duty for 29 years to carry out this most basic function, despite being handed a functional modern water system which they ran into the ground, resulting in the current discharge of unhealthful, toxic and discolored pipe water 630 times more acidic than safe drinking water (see my July 10, 2026 Letter to the Editor “GWI’s statement is irresponsible, callous and dangerous – water 630 times safe limit”).

Most despicably, though the GWI’s own laboratory water analyses show the water to be irrefutably unsafe and unfit for sanitary consumption, the Govt continues to claim that it is clean. In other words, condescendingly berating the public that they must not believe their own eyes, and don’t believe GWI’s own laboratory data.

That being the case, the President, Minister Indar, and/or the GWI CEO must drink in front of nation, the same water that they deem clean and which they implore the public to drink.

How unfathomable is it that a government could lack the ability to provide a potable water supply system to its nation dubbed as the land of many waters, despite inheriting an oil bonanza that triggered the fastest growing economy in the world, and a national budget that increased by more than 5 times to $1.6 Trillion since taking office. Not to mention that 60% of this humongous budget goes into infrastructure with wastage of a whopping 45%.

Owing to its proven incompetence, incapabilities, and ill-suited budgetary priorities as evidenced by its failures, the Govt seemingly had to resort to this alternative upon surrendering its failed efforts to mete out a universally traditional municipal water system, though drowning in resources to do so. For instance, as published by DPI on November 17, 2022, the Govt awarded contracts totaling $40 Billion to upgrade 12 water plants, and construct 7 new ones where “300,000 customers will be the beneficiaries of an improved water supply”.

Most notably, all of these improvements were slated for the PPP areas of Regions 3, 6 and the East Bank and East Coast of Demerara, with none in Linden with its five decrepit plants evidenced by the very poor and unhealthy water quality recently published by the Public Utilities Commission (PUC).

Notwithstanding these massive expenditures targeted to PPPC constituents, the water quality continues to get patently worse, no doubt the reason for resorting to this bottled water trick, unmindful of the added negative impacts to the business sector, and the added financial hardships and inconvenience to the majority poor. 

Taking the Plant on its face value, there appears to be no basis for its $500 Million estimated cost which is guaranteed to end up at least two to three times higher, based upon the Govt’s track record; thus, in the interest of transparency, the Govt must inform the people of the following:

♦ What was the basis for the $496 Million estimate?

♦ What will be the added costs to each household for purchasing this water for drinking, bathing, laundry, and other sanitary purposes?

♦ What is the procedure for conducting water sampling analyses representative of the entire distribution system? 

♦ The PUC must publish on a monthly basis, the water quality analyses in #4.

— The 592 Guardian

The Missing Logic Isn’t the Protesters’ — It’s Peeping Tom’s

/0 Comments/in , , /by
This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series ▶️
592 GUARDIAN• ACCOUNTABILITY &INTERIGTY JOURNALISM •GUYANA

The Missing Logic Isn’t the Protesters’ — It’s Peeping Tom’s

By Hem Kumar, Editor The 592 Guardian 

Peeping Tom spent an entire column asking what, exactly, the protesters are protesting about — since, in his telling, the cause of the MV Barima’s sinking has not yet been established and only the Commission of Inquiry can establish it. It’s a clever framing. It’s also a straw man, and a fairly transparent one.

Nobody serious is protesting to demand a verdict on why the vessel sank. That is, correctly, the Commission’s job, and no responsible voice in this movement has tried to pre-empt it. What the public is protesting is a set of facts that are already established, on the record, and that do not require a single day of the Commission’s evidence to evaluate.

Start with what the minister said, not what the ship did. Within roughly two hours of the tragedy, Minister Edghill made public claims about what had happened — claims that turned out to be wrong and took days and several revisions to correct. That is not a mystery for naval architects to solve. That is a minister’s own words, in public, misrepresenting a mass-casualty event as it was unfolding. You do not need the Commission’s final report to hold a public official accountable for what he told the nation while people were still being pulled from the water.

Then look at the manifest — or the absence of one. Weeks on, there is still no final, confirmed count of who and what was aboard that vessel. The numbers have shifted more than once. The total gross weight of the vessel remains unaccounted for by MARAD’s own administrative arm. A state ferry operator that cannot produce a reliable headcount for its own boat, after a disaster that killed dozens, is not a “cause not yet established” problem. It is an existing institutional failure that was true before the Commission was even sworn in.

Then look at the money. A vessel reportedly requiring a bill of quantities in the order of $125 million was nonetheless kept in active passenger service. Whatever the Commission eventually finds about structural cause, the decision to keep sailing a vessel with repair needs of that magnitude is a documented resource and oversight decision, made by named officials, on paper, before the tragedy. 

That is not speculation. That is an admission already sitting in the file.

Then look at the law itself. Maritime scholar Robert Millington’s published analysis of the Guyana Shipping Act found what he calls a “24-Metre Gap” — stability and safety regulations written to apply under 24 metres, and cargo-vessel rules that explicitly exclude passenger ships. The Barima, at roughly 40 metres, fell into neither category, leaving it with fewer statutory safety obligations than a small wooden boat. Section 3(3) of the same Act makes MARAD’s own Director the legal “owner” of the vessel — regulator and owner, one office, one person. That is not a question the Commission needs to resolve.

That is a structural indictment of the framework the ministry was operating under, written into law long before anyone boarded that ferry.

And then look at the prosecutors’ own standard. Three crew members were charged before the Commission had taken a single day of evidence, on what is by all accounts incomplete disclosure. Peeping Tom accepts that without complaint — the law permits it, he says correctly, and charges proceeded anyway. But he then insists the public must wait for the Commission’s full causal finding before treating a minister’s false public statements as fair game. 

That is not consistency. That is a standard applied by rank: incomplete evidence is sufficient to charge three crew members, but insufficient to criticise one minister.

Peeping Tom asked what the protesters know that the Commission does not. The honest answer is: quite a lot, and none of it requires the Commission’s permission to say out loud. A false public statement made in the first hours of a tragedy. A manifest that still doesn’t add up. A repair bill in the tens of millions ignored in favour of continued service. A statutory gap that left a passenger ferry less regulated than a canoe.

 A prosecutorial standard that finds “enough to charge” for deckhands and “not enough to criticise” for a minister.

That is not theatre missing its cause. That is logic Peeping Tom chose not to follow where it led.

THE 592 GUARDIAN

THE GATE, NOT THE GARDEN

/0 Comments/in , , /by
THE 592 GUARDIAN•ACCOUNTABILITY&INTEGRITY• JOURNALISM• GUYANA

THE GATE, NOT THE GARDEN

How a Barred Chairman Exposes the Model Village Initiative as a Campaign, Not a Consultation

 OPINION — August, 2026

At the Melanie Nursery School on Thursday, villagers of Melanie Damishana and Non Pareil sat through a public consultation on the government’s Model Village Initiative. President Irfaan Ali told them the exercise was about resilient, sustainable communities — that the transformation of a village is bound up with the transformation of the economy, the transformation of the country.

He promised culverts, bridges, walkways, streetlights, green space. He said their input would be incorporated into the plans.

Outside, and then behind a police barricade, stood the one person whose presence should have made that promise credible:              Walston Martins, Chairman of the Buxton/Foulis Neighbourhood Democratic Council, the elected local government official for the very jurisdiction hosting the consultation. He had an invitation. He was told to leave anyway, and warned he would be arrested if he refused.

A consultation that excludes the elected voice of the community is not a consultation. It is a performance staged in front of one.

THE SALES PITCH

Circulating alongside the Melanie Damishana outreach are two renderings that tell you plainly what this initiative is actually selling. The first is a gateway sign — stone pillars, hanging lanterns, a warm sunset backdrop — reading “Welcome to Melanie Damishana.” The second is a before-and-after board: on the left, an aerial photograph of an undeveloped, waterlogged stretch of land beside the public road, labelled “Existing”; on the right, the same stretch of land transformed into a manicured “Family Park,” complete with a splash pad, gazebos, landscaped walking paths, and playground equipment, labelled “Proposed.”

 Concept render of a proposed “Melanie Damishana” village gateway sign, presented at the Model Village Initiative consultation.

“Existing vs. Proposed” concept board for a village park, presented at the same consultation.

These are not blueprints. They are not budgeted works orders with contractors attached and completion dates fixed. They are architectural concept renders — the same genre of image a developer uses to sell condominiums that do not yet exist. Nothing on either board discloses a procurement timeline, a funding source, or a date.

What they disclose is a feeling: this is what your village could look like, if. The “if” is the part no one is saying aloud. Ask what compels these plans to become a market with vendors in it, a park with a working splash pad, a gateway sign that is stone and not vinyl — and the honest answer, on the government’s own timeline, arrives sometime after the next Local Government Elections.

The visual aid is not a construction schedule. It is a ballot.

THE PRECEDENT ALREADY ON THE RECORD

This newsroom  does not have to speculate about what happens to a glossy village render once the cameras move on.                         Silica City — announced in 2022 as the flagship of this kind of transformation — still has no completion date for the 110 homes of Phase One, four years later.

The public language around it has not hardened toward delivery; if anything it has softened, drifting from claims of near-completion toward vaguer assurances of steady progress. Christopher Ram, writing in Stabroek News earlier this year, described the project as operating in near-complete secrecy, with no disclosed financing structure and no disclosed allocation criteria for who actually receives a home.

A model village is, in that sense, a smaller and more portable version of a model city. The scale changes. The mechanism — announce, render, tour, promise, and let the follow-through go quiet once the political calendar has moved past it — does not.

WHY EXCLUDE THE ONE PERSON WHOSE JOB THIS IS

Local government exists, constitutionally and in practice, precisely to handle the granular business the Model Village Initiative claims to be doing: how wide a road should be, what species of tree goes where, where a streetlight is needed, where a playing field belongs. That is the statutory function of a Neighbourhood Democratic Council and its elected Chairman.

It does not require a sitting President, a Vice President, and an entourage of ministers touring the country village by village to determine where a culvert goes.

So when Walston Martins — the Chairman actually elected to make exactly these decisions for Buxton/Foulis — is stopped outside a business across the road, questioned by police for asking why a group of young women were being moved along, and then told by Assistant Commissioner Mahendra Siwnarine that he would be arrested if he did not retreat behind a barricade, the question answers itself.

Martins had committed no offence. He said as much on the spot: “This is my jurisdiction. Why must I go? I am not doing anything that is illegal.” He was removed anyway.

No statute empowered that removal. No bylaw, no provision of the Local Government Act, gives the State authority to bar an elected NDC Chairman from a public consultation held inside his own jurisdiction. What operated in his place was a police officer’s discretion, applied at a government-branded campaign event, against the one local figure positioned to ask an inconvenient question on the record.

A PATTERN, NOT AN INCIDENT

Thursday’s barricading of Martins is not an isolated overreach.      It follows the same script this news media  has already documented at Watooka House in Linden, where barriers were breached and joint security forces mobilised within minutes; at Koberimo in Region One, where a handful of women with placards were met by police in flak jackets; and on the Pomeroon River, where the Opposition Leader’s vessel was intercepted and turned back over paperwork that had not been demanded of the same boat hours earlier that morning.

Each time, the government’s public-facing message is outreach, consultation, listening. Each time, the security posture on the ground says something else entirely.

 

Melanie Damishana and Non Pareil, like Linden, are communities without a history of PPP electoral dominance. That is not incidental to where this tour has gone. A government confident that its development promises would be judged on delivery would have no reason to fear the one person in the room who could ask, on the record and in front of his own constituents, whether any of it is actually funded.

WHAT THIS PUBLICATION  IS ASKING

The 592 Guardian is formally asking the Office of the President and the Guyana Police Force to disclose: under what legal authority Chairman Martins was ordered behind a barricade and threatened with arrest at a public consultation in his own jurisdiction; whether any funding, procurement, or delivery timeline exists for the works depicted in the Melanie Damishana renderings, and if so, to publish it; and whether local government chairs and councillors across the Model Village tour route are being invited to these consultations as a matter of course, or selectively excluded where their presence is politically inconvenient.

Villagers deserve real culverts, real walkways, real streetlights. They do not deserve to have their patience rented out as backdrop for a campaign that dares not let their own elected representative into the room.

— The Board

     

    

The Ambassador’s Blind Spot

/0 Comments/in , , /by
This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series ▶️
592 GUARDIAN ♦ACCOUNTABILITY&INTEGRITY JOURNALISM♦ GUYANA

The Ambassador’s Blind Spot

EDITORIAL◊GUYANA DEVELOPMENT BANK

BY: Staff Writer- August,2026

Singh Praised the Bank’s Discipline the President Had Already Abandoned

Sasenarine Singh, Guyana’s Ambassador to Belgium and the EU, used his column this week to praise President Irfaan Ali’s “will” in pushing the Guyana Development Bank into law, and to warn — in the abstract — that the $40 billion facility could collapse into the next GAIBANK if credit decisions ever became subject to political influence, such as “officials prioritising requests from Regional Chairpersons rather than on merit and the bankability of the project.”

Singh wrote that warning as a hypothetical. It was already out of date. The very day  before his column ran, President Ali stood before residents in Rose Hall, Region Six, and told bar and entertainment-venue owners to expect Development Bank financing to soundproof their premises — a specific sector, a specific use of funds, announced by the President personally, at a political roadshow stop, months before the Bank has a board, a lending policy, or an application process.

This is not adjacent to the risk Singh described. It is the risk Singh described, already realized, by the same president Singh’s column exists to praise.

AN AMBASSADOR, NOT AN ECONOMIST, AND NOT A NEUTRAL ONE

It is worth stating plainly what Singh is and is not. He is not an independent financial commentator assessing a policy on its merits. He is a sitting Guyanese ambassador — accredited to Belgium, the EU, and the OACPS — writing under his diplomatic title to build a partisan case for the head of the government that appointed him.

This is not the first time. In July, Kaieteur News called for his recall after he inserted himself into a domestic political dispute over the government’s handling of Region Two squall damage, on the grounds that an ambassador represents Guyana, not the party, and not the administration currently in office.

That distinction is not a technicality; it is the entire basis on which a diplomat is permitted to speak with the authority of the state rather than the authority of a faction. Singh has now set it aside twice inside a single month.

None of that would matter much if the substance of his column were sound. It is not.

THE GOVERNANCE ARGUMENT SINGH BORROWED, THEN ABANDONED

Singh’s strongest material is not his own. His warning about Section 5(2)’s discretionary lending language — the provision allowing loans “with or without collateral and with or without charging interest” — closely tracks a public warning from Kenrick Hunte, a former Guyanese ambassador, who argued in a letter to the editor that the same provision creates four distinct lending scenarios, and that reliance on the looser two would turn the Bank into “a welfare agency” rather than a functioning development institution, repeating the mistakes that sank GAIBANK.

Hunte made that argument as a critique. Singh borrowed its shape, then used it to build the opposite conclusion — that the Bank’s guardrails simply need to be “constructed early,” as though early construction were still possible, and as though the President himself were a neutral party to that construction rather than the person already making unilateral allocation decisions in public.

Singh’s own numbers undercut him further. He cites the Bank of Guyana’s 2025 non-performing loan ratio — 1.5 percent, against a 4.9 percent Caribbean average — as evidence of the discipline this new institution inherits. That figure describes the existing commercial banking sector operating under existing prudential regulation.

It describes nothing about an institution with no board, no published lending criteria, and a president who has already begun naming sectors and use cases from a podium.

WHAT THE TIMING ACTUALLY SHOWS

Singh’s column never mentions that the Bill passed the same sitting the opposition boycotted in protest over the MV Barima disaster — a maritime tragedy still without a resolved accountability process. He does not mention that the Bank remains, as of this writing, a statute and a launch date: no portal, no office, no application window. And he does not mention Rose Hall, where the President personally directed a category of prospective borrowers toward the Bank’s future financing — bars and entertainment venues, for soundproofing — a sector Guyana’s own police force and the U.S. State Department’s Trafficking in Persons reports have repeatedly identified as a recurring site of labor and sex trafficking risk, most recently in the pending Magic City Nightclub matter now before the courts.

Singh asked the country to trust that “the country must demand” discipline of this Bank going forward. The country does not need to demand anything hypothetically. It needs an ambassador willing to report what has already happened, rather than one auditioning to have written the government’s press release before the government did.

WHAT WE ARE ASKING FOR

This outlet renews, in this context, the disclosure requests already put to the Office of the President and the Bank’s future secretariat:

  1. Whether soundproofing financing for bars, taverns, or entertainment venues will carry any safeguarding, licensing-compliance, or anti-trafficking due-diligence conditions, and who will verify compliance.
  2. Under what legal authority a not-yet-operational Bank — with no board, no published lending criteria, and no application process — is being publicly committed by the President to specific borrowers and specific uses of funds.
  3. Whether any establishment currently under investigation, charge, or licence review — including those connected to the pending May 28 Magic City matter — would be eligible to receive Development Bank financing under this initiative.

Ambassador Singh’s column asked Guyanese to trust that discipline would come later. Rose Hall is the record of what came first.

— The Board

Court Denies VAMED’s Injunctions, But Guyana Still Hasn’t Answered the Novation Question

/0 Comments/in , , /by
THE 592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY&INTEGRITY JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

ANALYSIS

Court Denies VAMED’s Injunctions, But Guyana Still Hasn’t Answered the Novation Question

The High Court’s Thursday ruling in the VAMED Engineering dispute is being read by some as vindication for the contractor. It is not. A closer look at what Justice Renita Singh actually ordered — and what the Government still refuses to say — tells a different story

On Thursday, Justice Renita Singh of the High Court delivered a ruling in the dispute between the Ministry of Health and VAMED Engineering GmbH that has already been mischaracterized in parts of the public conversation as a setback for the Government. The record says otherwise. Justice Singh denied VAMED’s application for conservatory orders that would have restrained the Ministry from taking possession of or occupying the Guyana Pediatric and Maternal Hospital (GMPH) site at Ogle and the New Amsterdam Hospital Campus, from expelling VAMED’s personnel or subcontractors, and from enforcing a EUR14.9 million performance bond.

VAMED’s fallback request — that conservatory relief remain in force pending an expedited inter partes hearing or the constitution of a Dispute Adjudication Board or Arbitral Tribunal under clause 21 of the contracts — was refused as well. The court found that VAMED had not demonstrated the urgency required for interim relief.

What Justice Singh did order was narrower and more balanced than VAMED’s public statement suggested. Both parties — not VAMED alone — were directed to preserve the fifty-two containers of equipment on the GMPH site, without opening or interfering with them. Only VAMED’s own security personnel may access the site, and only for the sole purpose of securing those containers.

The Ministry was separately ordered to preserve all contractor documents, property designs, plans, and intellectual property. By consent of Attorney General Anil Nandlall and VAMED’s counsel Nigel Hughes, the site crane is to be returned to VAMED. Critically, these preservation orders expire the moment an Arbitration Tribunal is appointed. This is a holding measure, not a judgment on the merits of either party’s claim.

THE NUMBERS BEHIND THE CLAIM

VAMED’s arbitration claim, filed as a statement of claim on July 27, 2026, seeks approximately EUR45.53 million. Of that figure, only EUR19.15 million is described as certified payments already approved for work completed. The balance is composed of variations, indexation, additional works, and other contractual entitlements — categories that are, by their nature, contested rather than settled. The Government’s own supervising engineer has separately estimated Guyana’s indebtedness to VAMED at approximately EUR37.94 million, a figure that sits meaningfully below VAMED’s claim and suggests the two sides disagree less about whether money is owed than about how much, and for what.

The underlying contracts are now a matter of public record: a EUR149 million Design-and-Build agreement dated June 8, 2022, for the GMPH facility at Ogle, and a EUR150 million agreement dated July 12, 2023, for the New Amsterdam Hospital Campus in Region Six — together, EUR299 million in public commitment for two hospitals that remain unfinished more than four years after the first contract was signed.

On completion, the two sides are not close to agreement. VAMED maintains that GMPH is 67 percent complete. A Government official, speaking to Demerara Waves, put the figure closer to 50 percent, and added a detail that will matter before an arbitral tribunal: that VAMED has not shipped or installed any biomedical equipment at a facility now a year past its original deadline, and that all subcontractors on the project have been released. If accurate, this is not a minor discrepancy.

A gap of that size between the contractor’s own completion claim and the Government’s — on a project already the subject of a multimillion-euro payment dispute — is exactly the kind of fact an arbitral tribunal exists to resolve, and this newsroom takes no position on which figure is correct.

WHAT THE GOVERNMENT’S REBUTTAL SAYS — AND DOES NOT SAY

The Ministry of Health has rejected VAMED’s public account as a “misleading narrative” that omits the contractor’s own performance failures. In its fuller statement, the Government maintains it has remained committed to completing both hospitals given their strategic importance, that it acted in good faith throughout, and that payments under a Design-and-Build contract are properly tied to measured, approved works rather than to the passage of time alone. It states that the Notices of Intention to Terminate, issued on June 2, 2026, followed extensive contractual correspondence over many months documenting delays, missed milestones, and inadequate mobilisation of resources — and that VAMED was given numerous opportunities to remedy these deficiencies before the Ministry exercised its contractual rights.

This is a more procedurally careful defense than the Government’s initial public posture suggested, and it deserves to be weighed on its own terms rather than dismissed. If the documented correspondence trail the Ministry describes holds up before an ICC tribunal, it materially strengthens the Government’s position on the question of who breached first.

But a defense built carefully on milestones and mobilization is conspicuous for what it leaves out. This news outlet asked, in February, whether a Deed of Novation had been executed transferring the Ogle and New Amsterdam contracts from VAMED Engineering to the successor entity now marketing itself in Guyana as VAMED+WWH, following the April 1, 2025 sale of VAMED’s international project business to the WWH Group — a sale VAMED’s own corporate website confirms took place.

We asked whether Performance Bonds and Advance Payment Bonds had been re-issued in the successor’s name, and whether UK Export Finance and Sweden’s export credit agency had authorized any transfer of the financing facilities underwriting these projects. Five months, a Ministerial statement to the National Assembly, an ICC arbitration filing, and two rounds of detailed public rebuttal later, none of those questions has been answered. Not confirmed. Not denied. Simply absent, in a rebuttal otherwise willing to engage on nearly every other point of contention.

A government capable of a paragraph-by-paragraph defense on contractual performance is not a government that forgot to mention novation. The silence is a choice, and it is the same choice that has now persisted across a change of government minister’s statement, an arbitration filing, a High Court hearing, and a written press rebuttal.

Whether that silence reflects an unresolved legal status the Government does not wish to admit to, or simply institutional carelessness about the corporate mechanics underlying a EUR299 million commitment of public and export-credit money, the public still does not know, in law, who the Government’s counterparty actually is.

WHERE THIS LEAVES THE PUBLIC

Thursday’s ruling should not be read as either side’s win. VAMED sought real, substantive protection from the court and was refused on every count save the narrowest possible preservation of disputed property — property whose ownership Justice Singh herself described as being in dispute. The Government avoided a more damaging injunction but has not yet had to answer, under oath or under parliamentary questioning, the single question this publication first raised in February: does a Deed of Novation exist.

Both parties will have their opportunity to present evidence on payment and performance before an ICC tribunal, and that process should be allowed to run its course. But the novation question does not require an arbitral tribunal to answer. It requires a government prepared to name the office responsible for tracking corporate ownership changes on a state infrastructure project financed substantially by sovereign export-credit borrowing, and to put a Deed of Novation — or its absence — on the record. Five months of silence on a question this simple is not an oversight. It is a pattern.

This publication takes no position on which party’s account of performance or payment is accurate; that determination belongs to the ICC tribunal. Figures cited above are drawn from Justice Singh’s ruling, court reporting, VAMED Engineering’s public statements, the Ministry of Health’s public rebuttal, and VAMED’s own corporate disclosures.

Joint Civil Society Statement on the COI and Other Matters of National Importance Related to the MV Barima Tragedy

/0 Comments/in , , /by
592 GUARDIAN♦ ACCOUNTABILITY&INTEGRITY JOURNALISM♦ GUYANA

Joint Civil Society Statement on the COI and Other Matters of National Importance Related to the MV Barima Tragedy

PRESS RELEASE.

We, the undersigned individuals and non-governmental organizations in Guyana, the Caribbean, and other countries, mourn with the families of all the passengers and crew who drowned when the MV Barima capsized and sank off the Guyana coast during the night of 18 July 2026. This tragedy which took the lives of a still-unknown number of innocent, economically disadvantaged, and historically marginalized persons, was wholly preventable and should never have occurred in the first place. 

This disaster- the worst in Guyana’s history apart from the foreign-led Jonestown massacre, and one of the worst maritime disasters in the Caribbean- has exposed the broken system of governance in Guyana, characterized by regular and widespread abuse of State power, chronic lack of accountability and oversight at all levels, intimidation and repression of critical and dissenting voices, and denial of civil society participation and representation in local governance and community based decision-making. Our mourning thus encompasses the strangling of democracy that we witness and experience daily in Guyana. 

We echo the public calls for the resignation of Minister of Public Works- Juan Edgill, Minister of Public Utilities and Aviation- Deodat Indar, and MARAD Director General- Stephen Thomas, along with General Manager of the Transport and Harbours Department (T&HD)- Yolanda Hughes Smith and Chairperson of the T&HD Board- Rosalinda Rasul, in keeping with well established norms of international accountability that locates ultimate overall accountability in those at the highest level of authority in the chain of command. However, it is a well-known principle of delegation that the delegation of authority does not absolve the delegator of responsibility. The public is therefore entitled to know how those above these specific individuals are also responsible in this tragedy.

We remind President Ali that all Commissions of Inquiry must satisfy the full implementation of Article 13 of the Constitution of Guyana on inclusionary democracy, guaranteeing the participation of citizens and their organizations in state management and decision-making, especially regarding wellbeing and safety. 

As such, the present COI- established unilaterally by President Ali on 26 July 2026- is unacceptable and must be replaced by a truly representative COI widened through genuine consultative processes to include the perspectives of survivors and families who lost loved ones, Indigenous leaders and organizations, relevant civil society groups and representatives of the opposition parties.  

We have learnt from the deficiencies of the previous COI into the Mahdia tragedy of 2023, which also lacked impartiality and suffered from State overreach, shielding of subject ministers and other State officials from accountability, and manipulation of grieving and traumatized family members of the 20 Indigenous students who died at that time. We reject a repeat of such ineffectual and unsatisfactory past COIs and will not accept anything less than a genuine consultative process so that full accountability can be realized. 

We also note the public reports of wrongdoing on the part of several of those appointed by President Ali to this COI, and urge the removal of all such tainted individuals from this process. 

  The Commission of Inquiry into the MV Barima disaster must: 

  • Be public and accessible to all Guyanese- not held behind closed doors- with full transparency to survivors, their families, and all Guyanese. As part of full accessibility, Creolese and Indigenous languages interpreters must be provided during the asking of questions and the taking of testimonies. 
  • The proceedings must be covered by the independent press who must be treated with respect and given unimpeded access to all participants, except for court-specified restrictions.
  • Ensure that the key role and position of Secretary to the COI must satisfy public confidence and strict requirements for independence, transparency, impartiality, integrity, and aptitude. 
  • Record the testimony of survivors of the MV Barima sinking as well as those who did not board it but who witnessed its final boarding and who can accurately describe conditions of travel to Port Kaituma on July 18 and previous public ferry journeys to the Northwest Region. 
  • Record eye- witnesses accounts of public and private parties involved in the search, rescue, and recovery operations, and evaluate the coordination, speed, and effectiveness of emergency response mechanisms inclusive of state and private agencies.
  • Record, share, document and specify in detail the psycho-social trauma counselling given to survivors and their families inclusive of who, how many times, where and qualifications of counsellors- not only for adults but also the many children who lost mothers, fathers, siblings and other family members. Detail arrangements in place to continue long term counselling for survivors and their families. Identify civil society organizations who have been approached to assist with psycho- social and trauma counselling short term and long term.
  • Document arrangements made for burial of those who lost their lives, to show if these were carried out in keeping with dignity and sensitivity and the wishes of their families.
  • Make all findings and recommendations in the final report publicly available locally, regionally and internationally.

Additionally, 

  • Indigenous and riverain communities must be meaningfully consulted and given the opportunity and means to testify to the shortcomings of the existing system of riverain transportation, and to contribute to solutions as they are the ones who rely most heavily on these systems and suffer disproportionally the risks and inequities. 
  • Sanctions must be applied on any public official who misleads or obstructs this inquiry.
  • The Government of Guyana must provide free, equal, and equivalent independent legal representation for survivors and bereaved families as that for public bodies, officials and ministers.
  • Admissibility of evidence must be determined by the Chair of the Commission- not the State agencies under investigation, and there must be no attempt to invoke ‘national security” in order to shield public agencies and officials from accountability.

We call on the President of Guyana to direct the Minister of Labour and the Head of the Environmental Protection Agency, among other agencies, to investigate and report on the numerous allegations of violations of health and safety requirements on the MV Barima ferry and other public hinterland ferries managed by the Transport and Harbours Department. 

Guyana, as a member of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and signatory to the International Convention for the Safety of Lives at Sea (SOLAS), must undertake an independent technical marine casualty investigation consistent with the IMO Casualty Investigation Code, the IMO Model Regulations on Domestic Ferry Safety, and SOLAS. A Commission of Inquiry cannot be a substitute for an independent marine safety investigation conducted in accordance with internationally recognized standards. 

We also call on the relevant authorities to also immediately comply with Guyana’s Shipping Act 49.01- especially Part X VIII which clearly outlines a structured framework for addressing marine casualties and requires formal marine casualty investigations by qualified boards or authorized officers to determine the cause of incidents before criminal liability is assessed for captains and crew. These marine investigations must precede any criminal prosecution, ensuring the root cause is established within the framework of maritime law- rather than bypassing it for common law charges or the Criminal Law Procedures Act.  

As such, it is our view that the action of the Director of Public Prosecutions- in recommending 72 charges of murder against the boat captain, first mate and goods loading supervisor- is precipitate and in fact, obstructs the full and fair investigation into this disaster. The events on 18 July 2026 suggest that the people with the most relevant knowledge of the disaster are these very individuals who are now prevented from answering questions to avoid self-incrimination according to Section 12 of Guyana’s Commission of Inquiry Act (cap. 19:03, 1933-1997). 

The DPP’s actions also prevent the coroner from holding an inquest into the circumstances of the MV Barima deaths, as required normally by sections 06 and 18 of the Coroners Act.  As the DPP has been unable or unwilling to disclose her reasons for these recommendations of hers, we urge that she withdraw these charges in order to allow a complete investigation and inquest. The grieving families and people of Guyana need to hear the full and unconstrained testimony of all relevant parties and all those who contributed to this tragedy must be held fully accountable. 

Finally, we demand assurances that all attempts to criminalize persons and organizations for exercising their constitutional right to freedom of conscience, expression, assembly, association, equality, and non- discrimination be ceased immediately.

Endorsed by: 

Guyanese Organization of Indigenous Peoples

Red Thread Crossroads Women’s Center

Transparency International Guyana Inc.

Oil and Gas Governance Network

We The People (Gen Z Youth Movement)

Organization for the Victory of the People (OVP)

Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC)

and additional signatories:

Link ⇒https://www.ipetitions.com/p/joint-civil-society-statement-on-the-mv-barima-coi-sign-on/

Politics Grows Up When Someone Actually Does the Reading

/0 Comments/in , , /by
THE 592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY&INTEGRITY JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

 Politics Grows Up When Someone Actually Does the Reading

A Response to “Guyana Deserves Better Politics: Beyond the Noise, the Likes and the Political Circus”

By The Board♦ August, 2026

A Guyana Chronicle  commentary is circulating this week under the Crossfire column — instructing Guyana’s political opposition to stop chasing likes, start reading the Budget documents, dissect the supplementary financial papers, and study the Commission of Inquiry into the MV Barima disaster instead of holding placards.

The advice is not wrong. It is simply describing, almost word for word, the work that has already been done — not by WIN, not by APNU, and not by the author of that piece.

It has been done by this newsroom.

The column asks for exactly the kind of scrutiny it never once demonstrates.

 

WHAT “STUDYING THE COI” ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE

The piece urges the opposition to “study the COI, the MARAD findings and processes, the regulatory framework… the procurement and maintenance history of the maritime fleet.”

Fair enough. Here is what that study has already surfaced, on the public record, weeks before this editorial’s publication date.

♦ The Commission’s own attorney-commissioner, Nyree Dawn Alfonso, has a documented prior professional association — through her own firm’s case record — with a lawyer who is now a sitting Cabinet minister.

♦ The CoI’s Secretary is the nephew of a former senior PPP official.

♦ The government’s own “Safety and Compliance Audit Team,” announced days after the tragedy, includes an official who has spent years as a paid MARAD consultant reviewing the very agency he was appointed to audit.

♦ MARAD itself disclosed back in 2022 — after an earlier fatal incident — that it had six certified marine surveyors for more than two thousand vessels, and was still advertising an unfilled surveyor vacancy months before the Barima went down.

♦ A retired U.S. Navy officer’s legal analysis of the Shipping Act has identified a regulatory loophole — the “24-Metre Gap” — that left a vessel the size of the Barima with fewer statutory safety obligations than a small wooden boat.

None of that came from a press release. It came from reading the documents — case records, CVs, gazette notices, procurement histories — the same documents the commentary insists nobody in Guyana’s political class is willing to open.

THE CONTRACTOR NOBODY ASKED ABOUT

Then there is the salvage contractor. The government quietly invited a Dutch firm to recover the wreck before any public bidding process opened — the same wreck that is itself physical evidence in an active inquiry into 73 deaths.                                                                                    That firm’s owner has a 2019 Interpol arrest record out of Nigeria, a Dutch Supreme Court finding of deliberate tax abuse tied to his corporate group, and an unrelated trademark dispute with BMW over salvaged vehicles. A commentary genuinely concerned with “procurement, expenditure, and national priorities” might have found that detail more useful than a paragraph about Facebook likes.

READINESS IS NOT AN OCCASION

The column singles out the Barima tragedy as proof the opposition should trade placards for policy substance — while ignoring that the same government it defends mobilized the GDF Coast Guard, the Police Marine Unit, and joint services within minutes to secure a Vice President facing a political protest at Watooka House, on a day and location the government itself had scheduled.

The Barima’s distress call, by the documented and still-uncorrected public timeline, went unanswered by a rescue vessel for roughly seven hours.

That is not a question of noise versus substance. It is a question of where the state’s readiness goes when the emergency isn’t the Vice President’s afternoon.

WHOSE POLITICS IS ACTUALLY IMMATURE

The piece frames its critique as concern for Guyana’s democratic maturity at 60 — disagreement without destruction, policy over personality, parliament over performance. Those are reasonable standards. They would be more persuasive from a byline willing to attach a name to them, and from an outlet willing to apply the same standard of documentary rigor to the government it consistently declines to scrutinize as it applies, in the abstract, to an opposition it has already decided is unserious.

Demanding a minister’s recusal on a documented conflict of interest is not “political thuggery.” It is the plain application of the same accountability standard the commentary claims to want.

♦ Asking why a legally compromised contractor was handed a no-bid mandate over evidence in a fatal-disaster inquiry is not chasing likes.       ♦ Asking why a rapid-response apparatus exists for a Vice President’s protest but not for seventy-three passengers taking on water is not political theatre.

It is the Budget-document, contract-reading, institution-strengthening work the column claims to be pleading for — already published, already on the record, and conspicuously absent from the piece’s own account of what “serious politics” requires of the government it does not name.

Guyana does not need a lecture on political maturity from a piece that cannot bring itself to look at the ministry it is defending as closely as it looks at the opposition it is scolding.

If growing up means reading the documents, strengthening the institutions, and following the money — this newsroom will keep doing exactly that. The invitation to join us remains open.

— The Board

Seats, Not Substance

/0 Comments/in , , /by
592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY&INTEGRITY JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

Seats, Not Substance

EDITORIAL BY: Staff Writer— August 2026

A question about oil revenue, a dismissive reply, and what both reveal about how power is actually exercised in Guyana

 A SIMPLE question travelled across social media this week: how much money is Guyana actually making from its oil industry? It was posed by Azruddin Mohamed, Leader of the Opposition, whose own legal and political circumstances remain, by any measure, unsettled and contested. But the question does not belong to the man who asked it. It belongs to every Guyanese citizen with a stake in how the nation’s resource wealth is accounted for and disbursed.

This Board has not been shy about the questions surrounding Mr. Mohamed’s own conduct, nor about the criminal allegations he faces — allegations that, notably, implicate the same governing apparatus he now positions himself against. Those matters are serious and remain before the appropriate authorities. They do not, however, disqualify a straightforward question of public accountability from deserving a straightforward answer.

THE REPLY THAT MATTERED MORE THAN THE QUESTION

What has struck this Board is not the question itself, but the character of the response it drew. Among the replies, one — from a commenter identified as Andy Rampersaud — dispensed with the substance entirely:

“This man don’t understand he don’t have no power in parliament, he don’t have enough seats.”

— Andy Rampersaud, in a social media comment

Set aside, for a moment, who said it and about whom. Read as a statement of political principle, it is one of the more revealing sentences to circulate in Guyanese public discourse this year.         It does not dispute the question. It does not defend the government’s record on oil revenue transparency. It simply asserts that a question from a numerically weak opposition need not be answered at all — that legitimacy in Guyanese politics flows from seat count, not from the substance of what is asked or the public’s right to know it.

That is, in a sentence, the operating logic this Board has warned consistently against  under a different name: governance by arithmetic. A majority in the National Assembly is treated not as a mandate to govern accountably, but as a release from the obligation to answer at all.

Opposition, on this logic, is not a check on power — it is a formality to be tolerated until the numbers change.

AN UNCOMFORTABLE MIRROR

It is worth asking, in this Board’s view, why this dynamic feels newly visible now. For years, an opposition built substantially around PNC support was met with a similar dismissiveness — one this Board suspects was never only about seat count, but also about which Guyanese communities that party has historically represented. Questions raised by that opposition were, too often, treated as tribal noise rather than legitimate scrutiny.

Mr. Mohamed’s rise complicates that old pattern, whatever one makes of the man. His base draws support across communities that have not traditionally rallied behind the PNC, which makes Rampersaud’s dismissal harder to read as simple ethnic reflex — and forces a more uncomfortable question into view: was the dismissiveness ever really about ethnicity at all, or was ethnicity merely the language available to describe a deeper contempt for opposition as such?

This Board offers that reading cautiously, as interpretation rather than settled fact — voter motivation is not something any commentator can verify from a comment thread. But the pattern is suggestive enough to name: if a minority-coded opposition and a numerically-weak but multi-ethnic opposition draw the same reflexive dismissal, the common denominator may not be ethnicity. 

It may simply be an entrenched belief that opposition, of any composition, has no standing to demand answers.

THE DEMAND THIS MOMENT INVITES

Guyanese citizens do not need to resolve their views on Azruddin Mohamed the man to insist on an answer to the question he raised. Nor should they need to wait for the next election cycle to demand that a governing majority account for the nation’s oil revenue in specific, auditable terms.

A parliamentary majority is a mandate to govern. It has never been, and must never be treated as, an exemption from having to explain.

The real challenge this moment poses is not to any one politician. It is to every Guyanese who has assumed that dismissing an opposition voice was simply the way politics works here — and to ask, plainly, whether that assumption has ever served the public interest, or only ever served the comfort of whoever currently holds the seats. — The Board

A Court Divided Against Itself

/0 Comments/in , , /by
THE 592 GUARDIAN•ACCOUNTABILITY•INTEGRITY JOURNALISM

ACCOUNTABILITY WATCH · REGIONAL JUDICIARY

A Court

Five of six CCJ judges accuse President Justice Winston Anderson of “dictatorial” rule and interference in case outcomes — and Guyana has more riding on this court than almost any other member state

THE 592 GUARDIAN  |  EDITORIAL BOARD  |  AUGUST,2026

THE Caribbean Court of Justice was built to be the region’s answer to a colonial anxiety: that Caribbean people should no longer have to sail their final appeals to London to receive justice. It was, in its founding promise, a court by the region, for the region — accountable to no imperial crown, answerable instead to the collective integrity of its own bench. That promise is now the subject of an internal reckoning its architects surely never anticipated.

Internal correspondence obtained and published by the Trinidad Express’s Sunday edition shows that five of the CCJ’s six sitting judges have formally challenged the leadership of its president, Justice Winston Anderson, accusing him of governing in a manner one judge bluntly called “dictatorial.”

The allegations are not about robes or bench jackets, whatever the paper trail’s origin point. They go to the marrow of judicial independence: panel composition, pressure on colleagues to align with predetermined outcomes, and a president who, by his own reported admission, told his colleagues early in his tenure that he did not see himself as “running a democracy.”

WHAT THE RECORD SHOWS

The dispute surfaced publicly through a dispute over a proposed judicial dress code — an administrative matter that, under ordinary governance, would merit little more than a committee memo. Instead, it became the occasion for judges to air grievances that had evidently been accumulating for months.

I have never seen before the level of dictatorship in the administration of a judiciary that I have witnessed at the CCJ in recent months.— Justice Chile Eboe-Osuji, in correspondence to fellow CCJ judges

Justice Peter Jamadar of Trinidad and Tobago went further, alleging in a detailed e-mail that he had experienced “an attempt to influence the opinions of colleagues that differed from yours in an authoritative manner” in relation to the Mohamed vs. MOHA, AG, and Magistrate extradition matter — a case with direct Guyanese relevance, given that the applicants in the underlying dispute are Guyanese nationals. Jamadar also cited concerns about “unreasonable timelines” imposed on judges reviewing a consolidated draft decision in the Jeremy Enriquez and Anand Ramlogan matter.

Justice Eboe-Osuji’s account of Barrow v. Caricom is, if anything, more serious still: he alleges that Anderson attempted, without prior consultation, to “single-handedly override judicial independence and long-standing CCJ conventions that guided how decisions are rendered when judges disagreed” — and that in the Mohamed matter, Anderson informed colleagues he intended to announce the court’s decision at a time and in a manner a “clear majority” had told him was inappropriate.

Justice Arif Bulkan — the CCJ’s Guyana-born judge — was among those who pressed for proper internal consultation before any policy went to the Regional Judicial and Legal Services Commission, and separately raised concerns about how a rigid dress code might disadvantage religious minorities on the bench. Justice Maureen Rajnauth-Lee invoked the lengthy, consultative process used under Anderson’s predecessor, Justice Adrian Saunders, as the standard against which the current president’s conduct should be measured — and found it wanting.

WHY THIS IS GUYANA’S FIGHT TOO

It would be a mistake for Guyanese readers to treat this as a Trinidad-datelined curiosity, distant from home. Guyana is not a peripheral member of the CCJ system — it is one of the court’s most exposed constituents.

Guyana accesses the CCJ in both of its jurisdictions. As a signatory to the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, Guyana falls under the court’s Original Jurisdiction as a matter of treaty obligation — non-optional, structural. And Guyana is one of only five CARICOM states (alongside Barbados, Belize, Dominica, and Saint Lucia) that has gone further, replacing the London-based Privy Council with the CCJ as its final court of Appellate Jurisdiction.

When Guyanese litigants exhaust their domestic appeals — in constitutional matters, in criminal appeals, in commercial disputes — the CCJ is the last word. There is no jurisdiction above it to correct an error, and no further right of appeal if the court’s internal processes have been compromised.

That is precisely why Justice Jamadar’s warning deserves to be read in full by every Guyanese lawyer, judge, and civil society actor who has ever placed faith in this court: he described the risk as extending to “both our OJ and AJ jurisdictions, with implications for the jurisdictions that access this court for the delivery of justice services.”

That is not diplomatic language. That is a sitting judge, in writing, telling his colleagues that the confidence of an entire region’s justice-seeking public may be at stake.

The Mohamed extradition matter cited in Jamadar’s e-mail is not an abstraction for Guyana. It involves a Guyanese Leader of the Opposition and his father, contesting the validity of an Authority to Proceed — a case the CCJ dismissed on appeal on July 29, 2026.

If a judge with direct knowledge of that matter’s internal handling is on record alleging attempted interference in its outcome, Guyanese citizens are entitled to know whether the process that produced that judgment was sound, regardless of one’s view of the underlying merits.

THE ACCOUNTABILITY THE REGION IS OWED

What is notable — and to the credit of the five judges who signed their names to these concerns — is that this dissent did not stay silent for fear of institutional embarrassment.

Justice Eboe-Osuji explicitly called for the matter to be resolved internally “before things get out of hand,” before it became public.    It became public anyway, and the public is better for it.

The CCJ was conceived as a repudiation of unaccountable, distant authority. A regional court that cannot hold its own presidency accountable to the collegiate norms its judges swore to uphold does not escape that colonial anxiety — it reproduces it in a new form, homegrown and unexamined.

Guyana’s political class, its bar, and its civil society have a direct stake in demanding that the Regional Judicial and Legal Services Commission treat this matter with the seriousness it demands, transparently, and not as an internal personnel matter to be quietly managed.

This publication will continue to track this story and its implications for Guyanese litigants and for the region’s confidence in its own apex court.

The full internal correspondence, as obtained and published by the Trinidad Express (CCN Group), is available via the link accompanying this piece.— READ MORE:

https://1drv.ms/b/c/86ce3366cc1a852b/IQAHMCOQTsyfTI8Ibb6NNCliAZ_6LWfPy7WEq8WNHUkaCpo

— The Board

Exxon•Guyana Profit Sharing Pennywise-Pt III

/0 Comments/in , , /by
 THE 592 GUARDIAN ACCOUNTABILITY INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM

Exxon•Guyana Profit Sharing Pennywise-PtIII

OPINION BY: GHK LALL– August 2026

The Exxon juggernaut rolled, had a great second quarter 2026.  Guyana had a hand in the company’s numbers, with its teeny-weeny 900,000 barrels a day.  The big news from this side of the Americas is that Exxon has been repaid to the penny its US$55 billion investment. 

Thanks for the jumpstart, all those projects humming, all those barrels churning out day after day.  Soon, Guyana will be in that exclusive club: a million barrel a day oil producer.  But at what a cost!  What has been straight with Exxon and this PPP Govt?  What can be trusted when no one can speak straight, give that sense of comfort, because their words ring of reliability?  It is against this backdrop that I offer a stripped-down version of what 50:50 profit sharing could look like.  To put my money where my mouth is, this is where I stand.

Please give a look at this barebones scenario in which I use one barrel of oil.  For purposes of conversation, the price is US$100 a barrel.  From production of one barrel of oil there’s revenue of US$100.  Gross revenue it is called.  I warn that from here on the wicket gets sticky.  There is that beast-an 800-pound gorilla-in the room and at the head of the table.  It is what’s called OPERATING EXPENSES. 

Given Guyana’s history in the last six years with oil, with Exxon’s accounting, my expectations are low.  By such time that Exxon’s world-class number crunchers are done with Operating Expenses, US$100 is not US$100.  It is not US$90 nor US$80 nor US$70.  I stake my ground, draw my line.  Guyana will be lucky if it ends up with Gross Oil Revenue of US$100 minus Operating Expenses at US$65.  I see it as being more at around US$60 in Net Oil Revenue. 

This is the magic, mystery, and monstrosity of Operating Expenses.  I pause for a moment.

Recall I’m dealing the hand that Exxon itself has displayed to this country.  Strange postures.  Evasive language.  Shadowy numbers.  Recall a maagah US$214 million in audit findings and those two glaring developments associated with it.  By some mysterious hand, US$214 million fell to US$3 million overnight.  Second, that relatively small amount of US$214 million (for Exxon) has been held up for several years now.  No comment from me on this.  I don’t have to say one word, since both the US$214 million and years speak for themselves. 

Now let this be said: I think that Exxon may think nothing of taking care of bumps in its way whenever money is involved.  Even when the amount of money is minute.  Now think of what to expect when billions are in play.  When Operating Expenses mutate into a monster that is turned into a weapon against Guyana’s interests.

Having said very clearly where I am, and how I envision 50:50 profit sharing will materialize, I return to Net Oil Revenue now standing at US$60.  It has to be divided in two.  Exxon gets US$30 and Guyana collects US$30.  The Guyana Government gets an opportunity to expound on the Exxon relationship and the trusted partnership. 

The Guyanese people should be happy.  All’s well that ends well.  Not so fast, folks.  There is that lovely consideration that is not going away, and which no Guyanese should forget.  Who pays Exxon’s taxes?  Guyana does. 

However that is schemed, whatever the form it takes, no matter how spun or swung, this is set in stone: Guyana pays Exxon’s taxes.  Or to put it better still: Exxon does not pay a dime of the taxes that it incurred.  Immediately this could be seen for the imbalances that are embedded.

Exxon has Guyana over a barrel (no pun) with Operating Expenses.  Then, Guyana is under the gun with the taxes and that farce about tax certificates.  Conclusion: In my single barrel presentation, this much should be obvious: Guyana’s US$30 (half cut) and Exxon’s US$30 (whatever that percentage) are not the same. 

It shouldn’t surprise, therefore, that the 50:50 profit sharing language of Exxon is so studiously, so painfully, careful.  Think of what’s afoot.— The 592 Guardian