MV Barima -The Bridge was Empty

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THE 592 GUARDIAN♦ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM♦ GUYANA

MV Barima –The Bridge was Empty

OPINION BY: GHK LALL

First, the disclosures.  This is owed to all Guyanese, none more than the departed in the star-crossed MV Barima.  Next in line are the tragedy struck family members; parents, spouses, children, above all.  Last in line in this first leadership examination is Pres Ali.  Prime Minister Phillips turn is coming.

In this postmortem, the objective is not to dissect Pres Ali and drain him of all plasma.  It is to touch him in soft strokes.  Inspire him to view his actions differently.  Guide him to motivate himself, operate differently, should, God forbid, another disaster visits.

Wherever Pres Ali was-in Canada, in a swamp, in a plane, in a luxury box, in the company of quality people-he had to come to a dead stop and race back to Guyana.  If he was in a plane that might be problematic.  In all other settings, it would have to be the same controlled urgency to his movements.  Except for one.  The one exception I would make to Pres Ali staying one minute longer wherever he was on that horrendous Saturday night, Sunday’s predawn hours, would be as follows. 

The president is out of it, due to serious attention needed.  He was not, and I am grateful to the Almighty, the merciful and the benevolent.  Once he was mobile, in the fullness of his senses, it had to be to Guyana for Pres. Ali.  A charter had to be found.  Leader to leader that should have been very doable.

He and his retinue, his wider circle, may not see matters this way, but he could not distance for a second more than necessary.  With knee bent before God, I submit to Guyanese what I think.  Pres Ali distanced.  Not for long.  But long enough.  He belonged in the company of the Guyanese people. 

No other company could compete for his time and attention.  Nor the lushness of his presence in the hours after that MV Barima Saturday Night Catastrophe of a unique kind. 

It qualifies as a catastrophe in my thinking.  So, when he came all solemnity and warmth, he was already cold in the consideration of citizens traumatized and reeling.

For the record, I repeat: a president is not a private citizen.  A former president is.  The head of a sitting head-of-state is the property of his people.  I see nothing radical in these assertions.  They are inseparable from the role.  It’s not given to pantomime.  Or phantomlike disappearances and reappearances.  There was Brazil before, if recollection serves well.  A president has dotted lines to sign, and lines which he must not cross.  His protocol officers should inform him accordingly.

Pres Ali may be the frontrunner for Guyana’s worst president ever.  When the MV Barima was engulfed in an unconquerable avalanche of water, Excellency Ali had a glorious opportunity to be remembered as Guyana’s most inspiring president ever.  Like I said in the first lines, I do not judge Pres Ali.  Nor is he hoisted aloft.  Guyanese get that duty.  Since the first days of his assumption of the presidency, Excellency Ali has cast a broad shadow.  On the night and morn of the MV Barima being sucked into the depths by forces that hurled aside resistance, Pres Ali cast no shadow.  His shadow was a fairy of the imagination.  His substance was invisible, sprawled on the deck of conjecture.

Where was Guyana’s president in the hour when an SOS calls?  What could be so vital that the dead is made to wait, and the living to wrestle with their demons?  The MV Barima could have been Pres Ali’s finest hour.  Regrettably, his clock could find no minutes making it his dampest.  When the MV Barima went down with the lives of over 100 Guyana lost, Pres Ali should have rose and soared.  He had to be found first.  In retrospect, he was the first unsounded toll.

El Niño Is a Governance Test, Not Just a Weather Event

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ◊ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM ◊ GUYANA 

El Niño Is a Governance Test, Not Just a Weather Event

OPINION BY: Staff Writer

Guyana is entering a season that demands more than warnings about heat and dryness. The Hydrometeorological Service has already said the country should prepare for strengthening El Niño conditions, hotter-than-normal weather, fewer wet days, and as many as 80 hot spell days this year, with the greatest exposure in Regions 4, 5, 6, 8 and 10. 

The same advisory warns that reduced rainfall and higher temperatures are likely to stress crops, weaken pasture quality, raise livestock water needs, and increase the risk of water shortages.

El Niño is a Governance Test, not just a Weather Event That means this is not simply a climate bulletin. It is a food, income, and governance problem. If government response remains narrow, delayed, or rhetorical, then the burden will fall on citizens through higher prices, reduced production, and weaker household purchasing power.

 The public has a right to know whether the State is treating this as a serious national emergency or merely as another seasonal inconvenience. The evidence suggests that the risk is already visible. Hydromet has warned of drier conditions, prolonged dry spells, elevated temperatures, and short-term drought conditions in parts of Regions 8 and 9, with localized flooding still possible in low-lying areas. 

In other words, Guyana must prepare for both drought and flood stress at the same time.

 The Budget Must Now Be Tested

The government has repeatedly presented Budget 2026 as a major investment in food security and resilience. In January, the administration said agriculture would receive $113.2 billion, with $81.9 billion going to drainage and irrigation, $3.3 billion for other crops and technical support, and $745 million for agro-processing and storage-related support.  It also said agriculture and water spending was part of a broader effort to strengthen food security and drainage systems.

Those allocations are now under public scrutiny. A budget is not a talking point; it is a contract. If the country is now facing known El Niño risks, then citizens are entitled to ask whether the money was spent on genuine preparedness, and whether the promised infrastructure and support systems are operational.  

That question matters because the same government has claimed Guyana can fully feed its population and that agriculture is central to national resilience.  Such claims cannot be made while the country remains vulnerable to predictable climate shocks without a visible, funded, public response. Resilience is proved in action, not in slogans

What Authorities Must Explain

The Ministry of Agriculture must explain what specific El Niño measures were funded under Budget 2026, how much has been released, and where the projects are active. Farmers need to know whether there is drought-resistant seed distribution, irrigation support, technical extension, and region-by-region advisories. Hydromet has already made clear that crop stress and reduced pasture quality are expected outcomes, so the ministry cannot wait for losses to occur before reacting.

The Ministry of Finance must disclose what contingency planning exists for inflation, food-price spikes, and support to vulnerable households. If imports become more expensive because of global weather disruption, transport costs, or tighter regional supply, then the public should know what fiscal buffers are in place.

The absence of a public protection plan would amount to a policy failure, not a natural inevitability.  

The Ministry of Trade and Commerce must state how it will monitor food prices, prevent hoarding, and ensure that market behavior does not exploit scarcity. Citizens should not be left to discover that the price of basic food has risen only after the damage is already done.

Transparency on monitoring is as important as the monitoring itself.  

Hydromet, the Guyana Water Incorporated, the local government authorities, and the disaster-management system must also stop operating in silos. Hydromet has already described the likely impact on water resources, agriculture, heat stress, and wildfire risk.  That information must be converted into coordinated national action, not left as an isolated technical bulletin.

 What Citizens Should Watch

Citizens should insist on a public action plan that names the lead agencies, the budget lines, the geographic hotspots, and the trigger points for intervention. The plan should show what happens if rainfall falls below a threshold, if food prices spike, if water levels decline, or if crop stress becomes severe. Without trigger points, response becomes improvisation.  

They should also demand regular public updates, not occasional reassurance. The government should publish food-security information, price trends, farmer advisories, and water-risk updates in plain language. That is especially important because the most severe effects will not arrive all at once. They will accumulate quietly through rising costs, shrinking supply, and tighter household budgets.

This is also why local communities must be engaged early. Small farmers,hinterland residents, market vendors, household gardeners, school administrators, and public-health officials all need targeted guidance.

Heat stress, water scarcity, and transport disruption are not abstract risks; they are practical problems that will affect daily life.  

 The Failure That Must Be Avoided

The greatest danger is not only El Niño itself, but a familiar national habit: waiting for the crisis to become visible before treating it as urgent. That approach is costly, unnecessary, and unfair to the people who can least absorb the shock. If food prices rise, if water becomes harder to secure, or if farmers lose productivity, then citizens should be able to trace the failure back to specific offices that had both warning and budget.  

The public should not be told that all hardship is weather-related. Weather is the trigger; policy determines the depth of the damage. Guyana now has enough warning to act, enough money allocated to justify action, and enough institutional responsibility to be held accountable.

This is the moment for the authorities to prove that their promises mean something. The nation does not need more declarations of resilience. It needs a visible plan, disciplined execution, and honest public reporting so that families, farmers, and businesses can prepare together and weather the fallout with less pain.

Walk with kings…never lose touch with the common people

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ♦ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM ♦ GUYANA 

Walk with kings…never lose touch with the common people

OPINION BY: GHK LALL

And, I promise one and all – those who supported me and those who didn’t – that I will be the President for all the people of Guyana, and I will serve each of you with affection, without discrimination and with every attention to fairness and equity—President Ali August 2020

 

As President, I will have to walk with kings, in our country’s interest, but I assure you that I will never lose the common touch. My first and last responsibility will be to the people of Guyana – all of them.— President Ali August 2020

 

As I first declared on the 2nd of August 2020: I am not the President of some Guyanese; I am the President of all Guyana. That principle has guided me these past five years, and it shall remain my compass in the years ahead.” —President Ali September 2025

No one could justifiably think that Pres Ali is struggling with myopia. I think, though, that he struggles with a touch of amnesia in August 2020; the last from 2025. The quotes are his words.

Now fast forward almost six years later, and there is the tragedy of the MV Barima. Pres Ali committed to the Guyanese people that he is going to be there for them. Every single one of them. How about that today, sir? Just a little. In a time of national tragedy is the best situation to make good on those words.

A Commission of Inquiry and no consultation with the leader of the opposition? Where is “of all Guyana” in this current national conversation?

In a time of national hurting, this is when national leaders rise to the moment and reach with arms outstretched for national healing. Not one person left behind. Not one boat allowed to stay at the bottom. Not one Guyanese left out, cast adrift. Not one media house left. Not when the national house is in distress.

Mr. President: this is not about who has got it right and who has got it wrong. This is about what is done well, there is confidence that all have done their best. To honor the dead. To regard the living. To keep the flames of hope shining brightly.

Mine is not the right to condemn, Pres Ali. History will commend or criticize him accordingly.

On reading his first inaugural address to the nation in August 2020, I stated publicly. Let’s try him. Let’s give him the space. I am sorry, Mr. President, but disappointment comes in waves that crest and will not let me rest. Nor the dead in the MV Barima who now lie in the uneasy embrace of death at the end of the sea. Their time was cut short. Abruptly. Frighteningly. Enduringly.

Mr. President, please let the work of the commission proceed publicly. Guyanese have had COI’s of extraordinary luminosity. They shed darkness, when light was all that would suffice. Why not cut Guyanese some slack? Why heap Guyanese on the rack? Why inspire me, Mr. President, to rise above all the noise that is vexatious to the spirit of the dead? Why add to the torments of the Guyanese people that are still waiting to make good on his words? So lusciously tendered. So grandly delivered.

“I will walk with kings” and “I will never lose the common touch.”

Mr. President, the indigenous of Guyana are waiting for their leader to not lose touch with them. They are pleading, but not begging. They are crying, but not cursing. If there ever was a time for Excellency Mohamed Irfaan Ali to “never lose the common touch” that time is now.

And, if ever there was a moment that called for Guyana’s national leader to stand up and say that I will be different (and truly mean what he says) that time is now.

When words are hollow, they have a habit of coming back to haunt. And, after that they hollow out even the best amongst us. Mr. President, I close with the words of that immortal Athenian tragedian:

“And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.”

Who’s Responsible, Who takes Responsibility

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THE 592. GUARDIAN ◊. ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM FOR GUYANA ◊ OPINION..

Who’s Responsible, Who takes Responsibility

OPINION: BY GHK LALL ◊ JULY 2026

A tragedy of catastrophic proportions is now Guyana’s to manage. An old passenger ferry boat went to the bottom. According to news reports of Saturday, 73 bodies have been recovered and 76 rescued. Taking the official count of 179 passengers on board the MV Barima, it means that 30 of them are still unaccounted for. Over a week after the disaster, there is still uncertainty about how many passengers, paying or not, with a ticket or lacking one, were onboard the vessel. The answers that have been provided have led to more skepticisms, questions. The leadership that is needed in this time of heavy loss and grief has failed to inspire, with adjustment of details shared, and the blame game growing in strength. Guyanese live it. I hear it.

On whose head should lie responsibility for this national human disaster?                 Is it the minister that has oversight? Is it the Cabinet that sits and reviews policy decisions, spending on capital projects, and such? Is it the leadership of the PPP/C Government? Does the political opposition taken as a unit, or in its separate parts, have some responsibility of its own, in taking a disaster and engaging in ‘mischief?’ The crew of the MV Barima on its last voyage has been subject to intense scrutiny. The management team of the Transport and Harbors Department has been sent on leave.

The fear is that there could be tampering with evidence. One senior government representative chose to use “noise” to describe in derogatory fashion the anger over the disaster, and the demands for straight answers.

Straightforward representations even in small amounts would have given citizens a shot of confidence. Those in charge more focused on sharing the truth with families and citizens, and not on seeking out opponents to score political points. There could be no worst time to be about public relations than when scores of lives are lost, with more likely to follow, as the days prolong. Men of stature and men observant of the demands of principle take responsibility. A disaster occurred with many lives lost and many families hurting. The people under whose watch that disaster occurred have one clear duty in front of them. Man or woman, they have to go. In real countries with serious standards, CEO’s do not look to distance from disasters.

They do not pass that tainted baton to captive administrative departments. They do not shift responsibility to those who are lower on the power ladder.

I now give a quick peek at how leaders in countries with standards react in the face of disaster. In South Korea, the MV Sewol disaster that resulted in the loss of over 300 lives, 250 of them children, was a contributor to the impeachment of President Park Guen-hye. Broader issues of corruption, targeting protesting South Koreans, attempts at coverup, and inconsistent and inaccurate releases in the initial hours of the MV Sewol disaster all led to her downfall. Her ceremonial Prime Minister, Chung Hong-won had resigned with days of the Sewol disaster. It was not enough for furious South Koreans, with President Park impeached later. In South Korea’s MV Sewol ferry disaster, there are some strange parallels to Guyana’s MV Barima disaster, of which Guyanese should take note. Providing inaccurate information, minimizing loss, shifting blame, targeting dissenters, and massive corruption in the background.

In Latvia, 54 people died when the roof of the Maxima shopping center collapsed on November 21, 2013. Two days later, Latvian President Andres Berzins termed the disaster a “murder of defenseless people” and said that “the perpetrators should be arrested.” On November 27, six days after the disaster, Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis took responsibility and resigned. Some Latvians thought that the mayor of the city where the roof collapsed, Zolipude, should have resigned, as he was more directly involved.

In Argentina, Egypt, and Greece, responsible ministers resigned immediately after train crashes that caused the loss of dozens of lives in all of those countries.

In each of these foreign situations, those sitting in government did the decent thing and resigned. There was no blowing smoke, no dismissing of outrage, no police action against civil society protestors.

Citizens are still waiting for someone in Guyana’s government to take responsibility and resign. I do. It is not with a one-man decision about a panel. It is of where the will of people should decide, seven-seat majority or none. Let all be put on public trial

MV Barima -Deflections, Dissembling and the Damning. 

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ♦ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM FOR GUYANA

 AN UNSPEAKABLE TRAGEDY· OPINION  ANALYSIS

MV Barima –Deflections, Dissembling and the Damning. 

There’s human devastation.  Still, the PPP Govt commits to deflection. The MV Barima disaster qualifies as extreme domestic devastation.  Families and communities battered.  The nation bowed.  Rather than strengthening citizens in a time of tribulation, the government engages in desperate measures at self-protection.  At continuation.  At what hurls damnation on its head.  Follow these.

The first words out of the government’s mouth were denials.  The MV Barima wasn’t overloaded.  There was no engine problem.  Those held briefly.   Then were buried under storms of social media rebuttals.  The government stumbled, recovered. 

Desperate to deflect attention from the blood on its head, the PPP Govt then reached for its remaining props: MV Barima crew members, a management team.  All tested for alcohol and other substance use.  Search for scapegoats.  Find them.  Shift attention and intensifying rage to them.  A tragedy had to unfold before that step was taken.  The test results have been shared.  Now how do those exonerate an unbelievably reckless government?  Or insulates government ministers?  Nothing does.  

Not when the MV Barima was an open-air steel casket waiting to close one last time.  The divers will find supporting evidence.  Testing of crew members must be both random and routine, given the culture and public practice of casual drinking pervading that boat’s operations.  With that as baseline, similar testing should be done for public transportation operators. 

The Guinness and grass cultures should provide good business for labs, and inform Guyanese that care about their dangers.

On that same fateful Sunday, one minister launch into a love song celebrating the president’s excellence before a largely indigenous audience.  There’s time and place.  Amid death and unknown casualties, came that disgrace.  The president has to be unimaginably poor in his job to need so many verbal props to sell him to Guyanese.  I still can’t believe that there was that cheapness, coarseness, and unmatched crassness.

Within hours of Disaster Sunday, the National Toshaos Council Conference kicked off in Georgetown. 

Maybe as many as 150 Guyanese dead, many of them of indigenous heritage, and a gathering for indigenous Guyanese proceeds. 

I have heard that the show must go on.  But not when so many died.  Or are feared dead.  Politics has hardened Guyanese.  There’s none harder than the PPP Govt.  Simple humanity and basic decency are the losers.  Hopefully, there are no big sporting bashes, as is the custom.  

There are many dead to mourn and still many bodies to find.  The MV Barima is Guyana’s World Trade Center; except for domestic hands that inflicted death on a scale unknown to Guyanese.  America erred terribly in the wake of the Kennedy assassination (football).  America didn’t repeat that failure on 9/11.  I was there.  I share. 

The National Toshoas Conference could have waited a week.  Written in neon lights is the callousness of a government committed first to propaganda and self-celebration.

It is now days since the tragedy, now a confirmed national disaster.  What about a period of national mourning?  Finally, three days announced.  I think a two-week period of mourning should have been the least.  But three days will have to do.  To honor the dead, the missing, and the grieving.  The magnitude of the disaster, as it seeped into consciousness on Sunday, mandated that national mourning should have commenced on that same day. 

I forget that the MV Barima was a boat without hope, and that Guyana was a country without a head, during those crucial early hours.

On Tuesday morning, there’s breaking news from a very visible and audible Pres Ali: a full, thorough and independent investigation.  I trust that this presidential investigation wouldn’t be like the Warren Commission investigation into the Kennedy assassination.  Or the Linden and Mahdia COIs into police killings, and a firetrap, respectively. 

What insults all Guyanese.  More camouflaging than convincing.  More PPP sponsored propaganda and what has no relation to the purity of facts in unfettered inquiry and testimony. 

Another thought -any credible commission of inquiry is only as good as its scope (Terms of Reference) and the people piloting that boat. 

If it’s a PPP Govt love boat COI, better scrap it before it gets started.  If it’s a lifeboat to save the PPP Govt’s behind, let it go the way of the MV Barima.  Down and out.  Welcome to Guyana, and the PPP Govt’s deflections, dissembling, and what damns it.

I wonder about all those sophisticated foreigners flocking to Guyana, and what they may be thinking of this sick, savaged country.

 

 MV Barima -What is Truth….

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ♦ACCOUNTABILITY& TRANSPARENCY 

 MV Barima –What is Truth….

‘What is truth?’  It was Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, who famously asked that of Jesus Christ.  I ask the same question of the PPP Govt: what is truth?  Relative to the now sunken MV Barima.  Then I go further: who in the PPP Govt has truth in them?  Re the MV Barima; beyond this boat to hell.  To draw closer to real truth, there was reaching out to people who plied that route for decades.  Plus, people in the shipping sector.  Plus, people of that area’s heritage; now its anguish.

For starters, cargo onboard can be much more (dangerously more) than what’s recorded.  Cargo loaded from top to bottom of what was a laboring, creaking, on-its-last breath dhow.  Add miners with the heavy equipment and appliances of their trade.  Add paying passengers with and without tickets.  Add children that may not be ticketed.  These all add up.  Only the surface is scratched, however.

Next, the MV Barima was an overdue ICU case.  Before putting out to pasture.  To pasture, not back in passenger service.  The truth is that, despite its severe handicaps, the MV Barima was repaired and patched up, when it ought to have been retired. 

Think in human terms.  Think of a dreadfully diseased ICU patient.  He is given some methylated spirits, and a full wheelbarrow to push, and a cart to load.  Last, the gasping patient himself has to haul the cart, as if it is a rickshaw.  There are neither mules nor donkeys around.

Separately, sending a management team home is a joke.  Too late to save one lost soul.  Means nothing for people shredded by their griefs.  Why wait for a disaster that was pending for years before there is action?

Truth be told, the entire PPP Govt has blood on its hands.  There are no innocents. 

Official spinning smears a tragedy.  It was the reflexive action Sunday morning.  Propaganda piles on indigenous agonies.  Crocodile tears degrade people dealing with unfathomable loss.  Losses for some.  While some were laffing and sportin’.

Today, the marine transport section of Guyana finds itself under harsh public glare.  I don’t think that’s a cure (sending home). 

I see a confluence of weaknesses; the sick way that this country is governed; part of the corruptions and coverups.  Year after year, state institutions and entities that form the bulwark of the Guyana Government’s face to the Guyanese people, have been infiltrated.  Then, generally overrun by politics and corruptions that dilute the standards and promise of Guyana.  Almost across the board, and in a long list of departments, PPP Govt selectees have turned a blind eye, dropped the ball, and fallen down in the performance of their jobs.  In the delivery of services that is safe and sound for Guyanese, what carries them to another level. 

In sum, the marine transport agency, and as harrowing as the MV Barima sinking is, it is not the disease itself.  Both are just symptoms, offshoots, of what festers fatally beneath the surface.  It is how a government has destroyed a country.  A government with virtually unlimited power and unquantifiable money, and that is all that it’s capable of: destroying a country.  Its standards.  Its morals.  Its systems.  Its funds.  Its aspirations.

In the PPP Govt, and with few exceptions, what Guyanese contend with is a combination of: Con artists, pathological deceivers, shifty concealers, and countless dirty tricksters.  Over 150 Guyanese, most of them poor, had to die, for the rest of Guyana to learn how the PPP Govt is a blight and a horror on this nation.

What is truth?  It is of men and women with only darkness in them. No truth.  No light.  Regardless, don’t lose hope.  There will be celebrating religious holidays before long.  Xmas is coming.  Why bother with a month of national mourning? 

Look at the kind of people that perished.  There’s that type of truth, too.  All should be pierced.  Could be the One Guyana that is desired.

Edghill must go; I say NO!

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THE 592 GUARDIAN. ◊ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM FOR GUYANA 

Edghill must go; I say NO!

The clamor is thunderous: EDGHILL MUST GO! I say NO! The people who put Minister Juan Edghill where he is must go. The people who kept Minister Edghill there must go. I take these positions for these reasons.

First, if Pres Ali was present in the hour of crisis, there would be no Juan Edghill making representations that now haunt him, load him with regrets. I believe he still has that human essence. I think that Pres Ali would have pushed him aside, and raced to the forefront to sell his own productions. I ask pro-PPP and anti-PPP Guyanese to think. Would Minister Edghill been given a chance to inform, defend? I don’t think so. So, who would have been the one lashing out at “overload” and “engine failure”? Minister Edghill would have had to hug the sidelines.

In his president’s absence, due to the urgencies attached to the presidency, Minister Edghill was saddled with the chore of going into full defensive-aggressive mode and tear apart those finding fault with the government.

Denounce “overload” and “engine” issues as fake news and mischief. He did. Then the bottom beneath Juan Edghill crumbled. Fake news was real news. Mischief transformed to prophetic truth. Minister Edghill, like the proverbial whale, was left stranded on the beach. He didn’t venture too far, or spoke too quickly. He did what had become normalized in the PPP Govt. Denied. Deflected. Denounced. Dismissed.

Second, I pardon the minister for over zealousness (no overload, no engine problem). But who would pardon the minister, or any other in the government, when a brand-new boat bought in 2023 has not yet been put in service? To repeat my Catholic Standard comment: did Guyana get a new boat, or a pig in a bag? He had delivered a defensive mouthful in Stabroek News, in June 2023. Now comes the contradiction: Why is the MV Ma Lisha in drydocks with a fixup bill for almost $200 million?

This was what sent the doomed MV Barima to the seafloor. To carry over a hundred Guyanese to their deaths. Adolf Hitler and Adolf Eichmann used to transport Jews to waiting chambers of death. What’s different with the steel chambers of the MV Barima that led to the end of over a hundred sons and daughters of Guyana? Were they, also, a lower life form? Were they, too, undesirable, hence, expendable?

Third, I expand my earlier pig-in-bag assertion. Scan the tender rehab documents for the MV Ma Lishha. Guyana didn’t get a new boat. Not with that many repair areas and systems needing replacement or revitalizing. Without a mile traveled. Was that boat cannibalized and Guyana sold a shell? Well-camouflaged, naturally. A shell of a boat that made the MV Barima into a death boat. When the MV Ma Lisha couldn’t pull its own weight, then the already sickly, rickety, MV Barima was deadweight in the most fatal meaning of the word.

Fourth, the ones who should go are those involved in the US$12.7 million MV Ma Liska. Was it stripped down in India? Or was it vandalized in Guyana? Now it needs US$1 million to oxygenate into working life. The Indian firm should reimburse Guyana that amount, AND 50 percent of the cost price for this dud ship. I pray that it is not another floating deathtrap for poor, hardworking, and tricked Guyanese.

Cubans aren’t the only ones in Guyana getting cheated with what’s due to them. The Guyana Government does that to its own. Guyanese were either double-crossed with that boat, or they are now been given double-talk with its condition. These mysteries now forever link the MV Ma Liska and MV Barima. One paralyzed; the other dead.

Finally, keep Minister Edghill right where he is. So that Guyanese always remember him for the 100+ citizens who died, but should never have. The ones above him should go.

1960s England, a sex scandal dispatched the MacMillan government. In 2026 Guyana, 100+ Guyanese die in a mass killing, and the PPP Government resists going.

Resign or Remove -Leading to What?

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 THE 592 GUARDIAN ♦ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM FOR GUYANA

Resign or Remove -Leading to What?

OPINION BY: GHK LALL 

Calls fly with increasing speed for heads to roll.  Officials must fall for the MV Barima tragedy.  More for the misinformation disseminated.  Less for the losses.  Whether resignation or removal, what difference does it make?  Where’s the positive for the Guyanese people?  They need truth and justice.  Not roping in the MV Barima fallout and continuing with obscuring.  The past is the best teacher.

A senior public servant was sent into the shadows by the PPP Govt.  Who won, who lost?  Certainly, it wasn’t the senior public servant, who may have had wings clipped publicly, but is now a bigger bird.  Another public official, also of considerable rank, was allowed to resign, only for a greater accumulation of power to occur.  This is a true-and-tried PPP tactic that cleverly retreats in the face of advancing public anger, only for the maneuvers at which the party is so skilled to takeover. 

When a man or a woman in the PPP Govt that has erred egregiously is reluctantly withdrawn from the public space, they don’t disappear from the scene.  There’s always a Congress waiting to welcome them, to garland them with more honors.  Hence, what purpose resignation or removal?  A charade in the past for temporary public appeasement, then a rebound later.  Often in the open, and with a finger wagged in the face.  See!  This is the PPP Way.  How it’s done!

As much as Guyanese call for heads to roll, and as much as I endorse, environmental and political reality intrudes into the picture. 

Force one to resign and the majority in the PPP Govt family would have to be sent packing.  Fire one, and many more have to be fired.  This is how one State agency after another has deteriorated and disintegrated.  One resigns or is terminated, and the whole damn governance structure could collapse under it accumulated weights. 

Incompetence pronounced.  Inefficiency extensive.  Corruption – the national political culture.  One aspect is of executives converted to envoys.  The MV Barima cannot be the tip of iceberg.  It’s underwater.  The MV Barima is an indication of the widespread nature of a killer virus, the crippled condition in which Guyana is left.

What’s the remedy?  Guyanese need leaders, ministers, and senior public officials to possess some minimum honesty.  Some decency helps, with class seen and noted.  If there could only be a little self-respect in the corridors of power, it may inspire some authentic respect for the people.  Not some superficial, hypocritical statement cobbled together in the midst of a tragedy (and a mystery absentee) for the sake of putting any something before the nation.  Callout one minister, or push out another, and be ready for the replacement who is likely to be cut from the same cloth as the ousted, maybe even worse.  If that could be contemplated.

Simple people don’t know much about these matters related to resignations and removals.  Humble families are at a loss on how to cope in the terrors and torments of their newly arrived grievous circumstances.  The badly buffeted need to be comforted.  The hollowed out (multiple family members lost) shrink from the thought of how they themselves are going to survive.

Belatedly creeping forward from under the ashes of the MV Barima’s descent to the depth is Excellency Ali.  A ‘full, thorough, and independent investigation’ has been committed to publicly.  If only I could lean on that, run with it.  Guyanese have heard that before. 

To remind: helicopter crash that killed five soldiers; Mahdia Dorm conflagration that incinerated 20 youths.  What the people of Guyana were handed was a PPP Govt style and an Ali standard of ‘full, thorough, and independent investigation’ in both instances.  One cannot be allowed in the daylight (crash report); the other was such a farce that it insulted the living and the dead.

There was a method at work before.  The wheels are already in motion.  Say the right things.  Wait for time to pass.  Give room for memory and interest and passions to fade.  Present an investigation that is a con game.  Then, return to PPP Govt paradise, smug in the satisfaction of another snow job pulled (or dumped) on lost or uncaring Guyanese.

 

 

 

The Numbers: What They Say (And Don’t)

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THE 592 GUARDIAN

Accountability Journalism · Georgetown, Guyana

The Numbers: What They Say (And Don’t)

I owe Guyana’s chief statistician.  He has enlightened.  Numbers, real crackling numbers.  What happened to that other number?  The one apparently causing so much agitation that it suffers from extended constipation.  Can’t come out, cannot pass.  Many great numbers, but a vital one missing, then another.

Over a million now living in Guyana.  Growth is good.  Population growth is good for a country so rich, one lacking capacity.  Helps to close gaps, ease stresses.  A separate stress intervenes, however.  Man to man can be so unjust, as the Jamaican songster so rightly said.  All these good people counted with such diligence, yet with a difference that’s distinctive.  What were they made of: plaster or putty?  Alabaster or asbestos?  

The numbers bureau can count.  But it can’t count the kinds of people that Guyana has.  Restrained expression or subtle omission?  There was a line item about how many foreigners in the preliminary census report.  With admission about uncertainty about quantity.  I like honesty.  But what about the levels of ethnicity of the various Guyanese groups? Those contributing heavily to that million, plus 25,000 more.

It is unlikely that all of the Bureau of Numbers field workers wore highly tinted glasses.  Or, operated solely at night.  Meaning, that they couldn’t detect black from brown, and who was not so dusky but bronze.  Instead of Guyanese being presented as a rainbow, there is a bow sending an arrow to the belly: shut up and sit down.  Be invisible.  I am trying for ways to overlook the blank space in the ethnicity column of the census disclosure(s).  It could be that when questioned about their racial composition, Guyanese composed a different story, a safe one.  They identified as “Other.”  With so many Latins from the region congregating in Guyana, it would be the safest bet for Indo and Afro and Indigenous Guyanese to identify themselves as “Hispanic.”  

Whether so or not, there is this sensitivity with declaring the ethnic makeup in Guyana’s population.  If not now, then when?  If not some other time, then will it be ever? 

Another side of me ponders if this lack of ethnic specificity is a tribute to the One Guyana movement.  No separate races.  Aal ah wee is waan.  What better representation of One Guyana!

Time for a reality check.  To face the color of the local ground.  When the Bureau of Statistics is so stubbornly resistant with sharing the ethnic proportions in Guyana’s population, what’s responsible?  Study from this angle: if the traditional base of the PPP Govt had expanded to, or maintained, a comfortable numerical (percentage) edge in the local population, that stat would already be in the public domain.  A cause for quiet celebration.  Persuasive proof of electoral strength.  To put differently, a convincing source of credible electoral power.  With lesser or negligible dependence on foreign and other votes.  Ah, the mystery, more secrecy.  

My position is that the Stats Bureau’s ongoing obfuscation of ethnic numbers in Guyana is neither accidental nor due to the regular difficulties in data gathering.  Because genuine ethnic numbers, in whatever form they are, may be indicative of a narrowing of the gap between the two major ethnicities in Guyana, I think that explains the Bureau’s dilemma.  Migration, family planning, and career priorities, individually or jointly, could have reversed the statistical history that has prevailed from the inception.  Hence, the government’s anxiety about publishing the ethnic numbers/percentages.  To repeat: if old ethnic numbers held, they would be old news.  If a sea change occurred, that explains the withholding.  Nothing to write home about.

Last, the Bureau’s hands are tied.  There’s a desire to complete that public gap in its work, and get on with some of its other work.  But orders must be followed.  Amid exciting numbers, the poverty rate is another unknown. 

Where does that stand?  What does it say?  About Guyanese existence, standards, amidst a big, oil boom

MV Barima: There Are Days Like These

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ◊ Accountability Journalism ◊ Georgetown, Guyana

MV Barima: There Are Days Like These

OPINION BY: GHK LALL- July 2026

Everything comes to a pause.  Writings already sent suspended.  There is only one development to share a word about: the MV Barima.  one word, and a whole barrel of pain.  A disaster greeting long before the sun showed its face on a Sunday.  Of all days, a Sunday.  The hopes and prayers started with the first words of the 07:30 Mass at the Brickdam Cathedral.  So many found, embraced, and cheered.  So many still missing, leaving an empty space.  Amid the manmade disasters on land in Guyana, there is this kind of grim disaster on the waters.  The numbers are not looking too inspiring.  The bells toll.

I read of 116 aboard.  Then it was 133, when the crew was counted.  Approximately eight hours after the news broke, 70 were rescued and close to that number still not in hand.  A dismal consideration when only adults are involved.  Children numbered among those onboard that now capsized ferry.  A terrible new dimension added.  My hope, my wish, my prayer, is that all are saved.  Not one soul is lost.  The odds of that happening are daunting.  Ten miles from shore is almost as far as the other end of the world.  Nevertheless, rescue operations are in full motion.  The government has mobilized.  Good.  The national leadership is engaged and alert.  Better.

Now is not the time to lose a minute debating the state of new helicopters.  Nor to speculate about the number of lifejackets.  Currently, there is a search and rescue operation going on, and that is where all eyes should be fixed.  It’s where all Guyanese hearts should be committed.  Every hour that passes is an hour that cannot be recovered.  Reality that is hard and unforgiving creeps forward remorselessly.  Another hour lost could mean that one more was lost.  Too late to make it through the day for a mother, or a father, maybe a grandmother or a child.  I saw some pictures and they were of very young children, some not close to 10, as yet.

It should emphasize to every Guyanese how fragile life could be.  It does so to me.  What’s taken as routine goes overboard and sinks in a heartbeat.  Quite literally.  In a flash, life races past the eye.  Though far away and out of harm’s way, those are the images that register.  Having been near to shattering disaster more than once, there is some idea of the shock that must have jarred many out of their sleep.  A passenger boat slammed by a force of nature, a battering ram wall of water.  Men, women, and children left naked and imperiled before the elements at their rawest.

I am hoping for two things to follow beyond this prayer dripping from my pen.    They are the thoughts that rise, will not go away.  The first is that the fewest are lost; and that search and rescue do not give way to salvage and retrieve.  Indeed, like that ancient sage of a scribbler said: there is a time for laughing, and there is a time for mourning.  Even if only a handful never makes it back, it is still one handful too many.  However tiny. 

And whatever the number that is not found, there is still that tragedy to be faced by family and community: lost at sea.  Gone to the depths.  Lack of closure adds crisis to family calamity.

The second and final thought is that the people of this young country—from young leader(s) to largely younger citizenry to a place rich with young visions that still sparkle-arrive at a clear and deep appreciation of what is needed to make neighbor and others better.  There is too much bickering and cursing.  There is too much disagreeing, on the one hand, and too much demonizing and damning, on the other.  There is a storehouse of riches, but of real riches there is too much poorness.  In counting the hours,

I am keeping vigil, counting the numbers being picked up, flashing across the screens.  Let there be as many as could be.