MINISTER INDAR ECSTATIC MANIFESTATIONS

/0 Comments/in , /by

THE 592 GUARDIAN♦ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM

Minister Indar’s Ecstatic Manifestations

Minister Indar unwittingly got himself into a fine pickle.  In talking about negotiations with the Turkish electricity barge executives, he ventured into the realm of incomprehensible ecstatic manifestations. 

Our government led by President Ali, we made sure that we took some strong positions on negotiation.”

I am awed by unrestrained merriment that took hold of the honorable minister.  Apparently, Minister Indar is more the Minister of Public Comedies than he is as Minister of Public Utilities.  I humbly petition Excellency Ali to do his duty.  Make it official, please, Mr. President: Reappoint Deodat Indar to the Minister of National Hilarity portfolio.

When has our government led by Pres Ali…made sure that we took some strong positions on negotiation             

Because it is my government and my president, I search for such a record, hold both accountable.  To my fellow Guyanese: Seen as many Cuban medical personnel recently?  Check in Havana or Guantanamo. 

And there stands the government’s self-celebrating position of taking

The PPP Govt, as led by Pres Ali, took a strong position on deportees.  Not those who hailed from Demerara, Berbice and, (yes) Essequibo.  But those from far and farther away.  But then not even those that the government would be proud to invite to dinner at State House.  If the PPP wouldn’t welcome them at Congress, then they shouldn’t be in this country.  Game over.  Except that this isn’t a game. 

Hence, when Marco Rubio came sailing here like Christopher Columbus on his new voyage of discovery, he should have been given a return ticket there and then.  Take that message about third country deportees, and stuff it, buster.  How about that for taking a strong position on negotiation.  Gimme some Cubans doctors, and Guyana is duty bound to take in some Guyanese deportees.The U.S. milked them in their prime.  The U.S. must drink them in their grime and brine.

The Canadian gold people came here.  They put in a dollar and get an acre.  Thousands of acres.  From the small dollars invested, they swap out, flip over, and switch around those same now rich gold acres to new parties.  A million for a hundred more.  Sweet odds, lavish returns.  What strong position the PPP Govt, as led by Excellency Ali?  It happened once -nothing.  It happened again – no reaction from the Ali-led PPP Govt (again).  Some kind of special position and exceptional negotiation is that, from Minister Indar.  The foreign gold people pulled that one once.  Therefore, it made perfect financial sense (and leadership ones, too) to take a truly strong position and put a stopper in that loophole.  The situation cried out for that form of justice.  Like the blood of Abel cried out for recompense when the hand of a brother was raised fatally.  It was against what taints, even tampers, with the fabric of friendship.  What ought to have been a strong position taken (as led by Pres Ali) for a respectful relationship between Guyana and investors who rush here to grab a load of free gold.

I regret that in extoling the PPP Govt’s virtues: strong positions and the leadership of Dr. Ali, re negotiations, Minister Indar gave short thrift to history, and delighted himself with comedy.                                                                                                            Surely, he has to know that when he gleams with words like those that he descends into the old, soggy territory: what’s recklessly merry, of rank hilarity.  I think that Minister Indar has a second career waiting.  A master jester.  Hailed for making his mark as a determined, but still unskilled, entertainer.                         The PPP Govt seems to spawn them by the hundreds every week it’s in office.

THE 592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM 

THE CONSENT VACUUM:How Guyana is Dismantling Indeginous Land Rights

/0 Comments/in , /by

THE 592GUARDIAN♦Accountability Journalism forPublic Interest  EDITORIAL

The Consent Vacuum: How Guyana Is Dismantling Indigenous Land Rights One Mining Permit at a Time

Chinese Landing is not an isolated failure. It is the template.

 | The 592 Guardian Editorial Board | June 2026

The government of Guyana has done something remarkable in Chinese Landing, Region 1. It has managed to simultaneously insist that mining restrictions remain “in effect” while actively endorsing the operations of the outside tenure holders those restrictions were meant to constrain. Minister of Natural Resources Vickram Bharrat offered this contradiction without apparent discomfort to Kaieteur News on June 28, 2026, and the Ali administration has made no effort to reconcile it.

This is not semantic confusion. It is policy. And it represents one of the most consequential accountability failures in Guyana’s accelerating petrostate transition: the systematic hollowing of the legal architecture that was supposed to protect Indigenous land rights as extraction expands.

“The villagers are the true, lawful tenure holders of the area by virtue of being the absolute owners of the titled lands.” — Chinese Landing Village Council, June 2026

I.THE STRUCTURE OF THE BETRAYAL

The facts at Chinese Landing are not in dispute, except by the government that is facilitating the breach. The Chinese Landing Carib community holds titled land under Guyana’s Amerindian Act. Section 48 of that Act is explicit: no external miner may operate within titled Indigenous territory without a formal agreement with the resident Village Council. That is not a guideline. It is a statutory precondition.

The Chinese Landing Village Council has confirmed that no such agreement exists. No operators presented themselves to the council. No formal consultation was conducted. The Toshao, Nikita Miller, has confirmed that current operations are active and that the persons managing the worksites — Stephen Vieira, acting under power of attorney for Wayne Vieira — sought signatures from individual residents at the Tassawini airstrip for a proposed labour agreement, bypassing the legally mandated party entirely.

Nine residents and two non-residents reportedly signed. The Village Council — the only body with statutory authority to enter such an agreement — was not involved. Under any reading of Section 48, this means current operations at Chinese Landing are conducted without lawful consent. The Minister’s claim that “legitimate tenure holders” are operating lawfully is a legal fiction built on the deliberate confusion of state-issued mining permits with the community consent those permits do not and cannot replace.

II.THE CCJ RULING AND THE GAP THAT WAS NEVER CLOSED

The government’s position rests on a misreading — or a deliberate misrepresentation — of the Caribbean Court of Justice’s ruling in the Wayne Vieira matter. In 2010, a GGMC officer issued a Cease Work Order against Vieira for operating without a village agreement. The CCJ ultimately struck down that order. The government reads this as validation of Vieira’s underlying mining operations.

That reading is false. The CCJ’s ruling turned on narrow jurisdictional grounds: the Mining Act empowers the Minister to craft regulations tied to that Act, but does not authorise GGMC officers to enforce the separate provisions of the Amerindian Act through Cease Work Orders. The court did not validate Vieira’s permits. It did not extinguish the community’s titled rights. It found, precisely and only, that the enforcement mechanism used was ultra vires.

What the CCJ actually produced was a legal gap: Guyana’s primary mining regulator has no statutory mechanism to enforce Indigenous consent requirements.

That gap has been sitting in plain view since that ruling. The Ali administration — which has had years and a petrostate revenue windfall to address it — has legislatively done nothing. The gap is not an oversight. It is an operational feature.

The CCJ did not validate Vieira’s mining. It exposed a gap. That gap has never been closed. It is now being exploited daily.

III.THE IACHR RECORD AND THE PATTERN OF TARGETED AGGRESSION

Chinese Landing is not new to international human rights scrutiny. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights previously issued precautionary measures for the community, citing a “serious and urgent risk” of irreparable harm. The IACHR documented a pattern of targeted aggression: a 2018 incident in which a local family was allegedly expelled from their home by mine security and the police Tactical Services Unit; multiple accounts of residents subjected to searches at gunpoint.

These measures were issued because ordinary domestic remedies had failed. The community’s land rights had not been adjudicated on their substantive merits. The Court of Appeal has yet to issue a ruling on the community’s underlying claims. Chinese Landing residents have been excluded from past legal proceedings between the GGMC and external miners, leaving their rights unrepresented in proceedings that directly affected their land.

The IACHR’s precautionary measures carry legal weight under international human rights law. The government of Guyana has an obligation to respond to them. The 592 Guardian is not aware of any substantive government action to implement those measures or report compliance to the Commission. This editorial demands that the Ministry of Legal Affairs and the Office of the Attorney General publicly disclose their current posture on Guyana’s IACHR obligations in the Chinese Landing matter.

IV.THE PATTERN: CHINESE LANDING AS TEMPLATE

This editorial treats Chinese Landing not as an isolated case but as the current iteration of a structural pattern this Board has documented across Guyana’s extractive sector.                                The pattern is consistent: state-issued instruments — mining permits, environmental clearances, sole-source contracts — are used to confer apparent legitimacy on operations that bypass mandatory consent, regulatory oversight, or both

When legal challenges arise, the enforcement gap is invoked. When international scrutiny arrives, the government issues process statements that obscure the substantive breach.

The GGMC’s nine-year audit backlog, documented in the 2024 Auditor General’s report and reported by this Board, is not unrelated to Chinese Landing. An agency that cannot produce audited financial statements cannot credibly regulate consent compliance in remote interior communities. The PAC’s stalled oversight function, the Parliamentary Sectoral Committee on Economic Services’ reduced meeting schedule — these institutional failures do not occur in isolation from Chinese Landing. They are the environment in which Chinese Landing is made possible.

The EKAA HRIM quarry case in Region Seven — passport confiscation, debt bondage, a worker death, no criminal charges — follows the same structural logic: an extraction operation that bypassed labour and consent protections, proceeded under state-issued instruments, and faced no meaningful regulatory consequence. The 592 Guardian filed a formal ILO dossier on that matter. We note that the same enforcement vacuum that enabled EKAA HRIM is the enforcement vacuum that Minister Bharrat is now defending in Chinese Landing.

The extraction pace is blazing. The implementation and enforcement lag is not accidental. It is the policy.

 

V.WHAT MINISTER BHARRAT SAID AND WHAT IT MEANS

Minister Bharrat’s statement to Kaieteur News warrants close legal analysis. He said: “Restrictions for mining in Chinese Landing, outside of legitimate tenure holdings, continue to be in effect.” This formulation does two things simultaneously. First, it acknowledges that restrictions exist — conceding that not all external mining at Chinese Landing is permissible. Second, it carves out “legitimate tenure holdings” as exempt from those restrictions.

But the Amerindian Act does not create a carve-out for tenure holders. Section 48 applies to all external operators regardless of their tenure status. A GGMC-issued permit is not a substitute for the community consent the Act requires. The Minister’s formulation, if it reflects actual government policy, constitutes an executive interpretation of the Amerindian Act that is without statutory basis. It is the kind of interpretation that, if applied consistently, would render Section 48 a dead letter throughout titled Indigenous territories wherever a state-issued tenure exists.

The Minister further asserted that “community members have been receptive.” The Village Council flatly denies this. The Toshao flatly denies this. The broader community, per the council, remains deeply opposed. This Board notes that the government’s claim of community receptiveness is unsubstantiated, contradicted by the titled owners’ elected leadership, and structurally consistent with the government’s practice of identifying sympathetic individuals within Indigenous communities to produce the appearance of consent without its substance.

VI.ACCOUNTABILITY DEMANDS

To Minister Vickram Bharrat:                                                  →Produce the legal opinion on which the government relies to characterise the Vieira operations as lawful under the Amerindian Act, Section 48.                                                        →Identify by name the “community members” whose receptiveness you cited. Explain whether the government considers an individual signature obtained at an airstrip to constitute compliance with the formal agreement requirement under Section 48.

To the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission:               →Disclose whether any formal notification was made to the GGMC that operations had resumed at Chinese Landing. Identify what enforcement mechanism, if any, exists for GGMC to act if the Village Council files a complaint. Produce the current status of Wayne Vieira’s tenure holdings and any conditions attached to those tenures.

To the National Toshaos Council:                                                  →This matter involves a titled community, a statutory consent requirement, active extraction without council approval, and a government minister publicly dismissing the community’s legal position. The NTC has a mandate to advocate for Indigenous land rights nationally. This Board demands a public statement on the Chinese Landing situation and a formal legal position on the government’s interpretation of Section 48.

To the Court of Appeal:                                                                            →The community’s substantive land claims remain undecided. Active, contested extraction is proceeding daily in the interim. This Board formally calls attention to the urgency of this matter and the real-world harm being inflicted during the pendency of proceedings.

To the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights:          →The government of Guyana has not, to this Board’s knowledge, provided a substantive compliance report on its obligations under the precautionary measures issued for Chinese Landing. Extraction has resumed. The community remains exposed. We call on the Commission to formally request a compliance update and to treat resumed extraction as a material change in circumstances.

VII. CLOSING: THE NOVEMBER ASSURANCE

As recently as November 2025 — seven months before Minister Bharrat’s statement to Kaieteur News — the government gave the Chinese Landing community assurances that mining restrictions would remain firmly in place. The community accepted those assurances. They were made by a government that knew, or should have known, that tenure holders it was already supporting were preparing to resume operations.

The reversal was not disclosed proactively. It was confirmed reactively, when Kaieteur News asked. The Village Council learned of the government’s changed position through press coverage, not through any formal notification from the Ministry of Natural Resources or any other state body.

This is the governance culture that Guyana’s oil boom has entrenched: assurances without enforcement, restrictions without mechanisms, consent claimed from individuals while the legally mandated collective body is bypassed. Chinese Landing’s titled Carib community did not lose their land rights through a court order. They are losing them through a process of institutional erosion — a budget here, a legislative gap there, a minister’s word that means less every time it is given.

The 592 Guardian will continue to report on this matter. We are requesting from the Ministry of Natural Resources, the GGMC, and the Office of the Attorney General all communications related to Chinese Landing mining operations since January 2025.  

The Editorial Board—The 592 Guardian

 

ILLNESS AND DEATH,THEN MORE SICKNESS, DEATH-LIKE STATES

/0 Comments/in , /by

THE 592 GUARDIAN♦ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM♦JUNE 2026                                                                                  ILLNESS AND DEATH, THEN MORE SICKNESS, DEATHLIKE STATE

I met Mr. Don Singh just once. Stopped and shared a few minutes in pleasant conversation. Whatever his politics, my impression was of a decent fellow. When the news of his sudden illness came, it was a surprise. Now that he has left these shores, may his soul rest in peace. To his biological family, my condolences on what has to be a hard loss. To his political family, regrets at losing a formidable worker. And, to my regret, whenever I make the mistake of thinking that things can’t get worse in this country, sink to more depraved depths, they do.

I struggle to understand how some can find joy in a man’s illness. A political man, a prince of a man, poor man, or a man who may have made himself, or be seen as, an enemy, it does not matter. There is ugly and there is ugly. To chortle privately on receiving the news of sickness is bad enough. To celebrate sickness in the vast public space of social media is degrading to an unfathomably dreadful level. It’s a sickness of a terrible kind by itself. Guyanese have really sunk to the bottom of a bottomless pit. When the savaging politics of this land of barbarians takes precedence over basic humanity, and day-to-day decency. I don’t care who is involved, so I say it now, and will say it forever. Whoever finds laughter, a time to engage in mockery, and an opportunity to kick a man, during a time of serious illness, that is one sick puppy. Sick in the head. Sick to the soul. And so sick and so callously indifferent that may have already died.

It is at times like these that I am glad to hold what is for me a prized outsider status.

Not trapped and warped by the prejudices that power local politics. Not condemned to the garbage dumpsite where ancient political grudges fester and flourish. There is so much hating, the call to forgiving may now be forever lost.

Guyanese are ghosts inside a skeleton that is overloaded and overflowing with a stream of poisons that find escape and the worst expressions when there is a human tragedy. Who is so base they see an enemy during those painful moments of loss and human catastrophe? I cast my eyes across to Venezuela and devastating earthquakes of this and that magnitude, and a full body shiver runs amok. Guyanese are so fortunate when the licks and kicks of providence were allocated. Perhaps that explains why the people of this country are so cursed. By the irresistible pull of their politics hurling them towards all that they have come to know: gutter reactions. Such was what stalked the news of Mr. Don Singh’s illness.

Now that he is gone to his creator, there was a moment for many of the social media warriors to regroup and recollect themselves. Having had a good laugh at sickness, the news of the man’s death was a line not to be crossed. Except that it was. The unbreachable breached. Treating self with profanity and vulgarity amid threnodies of grieving. Guyanese do wear their disgrace on their sleeves. All self-respect hollowed out and proudly displayed on the altar of political frenzies that burn at higher and higher pitches.

Seeing that sickness and death are causes for ostentatious displays of ignorance, it is no wonder that living has become such a corrosive burden in this divided, raucous, self-defeating society.

I behold Guyanese, who are committed to tearing apart and bringing down each other. It is all in the name of the wrenching and divisive politics that have haunted this land, in times of peace and relative quiet. Thus, I cringe in thinking of how citizens may be to fellow citizens in times that are hostile and more hateful. Often, I am glad that, though many a thought is shared in public spaces, there is still rebuffing getting any closer. The armor that protects. The safety net that upholds sanity.

May the soul of this brother, Don Singh, find eternal rest.

THE ARSONIST AT THE TABLE

/0 Comments/in , /by

THE 592 GUARDIAN♦ EDITORIAL♦ENVIORMENTAL ACCOUNTABILITY

THE ARSONISTS AT THE NEGOTIATING TABLE

How the fossil fuel industry captured the world’s climate process — and what it means for everyone paying the price

I. The Heat Is Not Hypothetical Anymore
From late May 2026 onwards, Europe was struck by severe heatwaves that broke records in Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom — with temperatures running 10 to 15 degrees Celsius above normal, causing deaths and arriving earlier than Central European summers have historically begun.
World Weather Attribution scientists found that fossil fuel-driven climate change made this heatwave the most severe and widespread in Europe’s recorded history. 
Spring 2026 was the hottest spring ever recorded in France since measurements began in 1900. In the United States, March 2026 was the warmest March on record for the contiguous 48 states.  These are not anomalies. They are trajectory.

The human cost compounds silently. A 2025 European analysis estimated nearly 63,000 heat-related deaths in Europe in 2024 alone. Heat-related deaths among older people have risen sharply according to the Lancet Countdown, and hundreds of thousands now die globally each year from heat. The United Nations Environment Programme reports that heat-related deaths among adults aged 65 and above have surged by an estimated 85% since the 1990s.                                                                   

This is what manufactured delay costs. Not in abstractions — in bodies

II. What Manufactured Delay Looks Like

The fossil fuel industry has not simply lobbied governments. It has embedded itself inside the very process designed to contain it.
Between 2021 and 2024, a minimum of 5,368 fossil fuel lobbyists attended UN climate talks, representing 859 different fossil fuel organisations, including 180 oil and gas corporations. Just 90 of those corporations produced nearly 60% of global oil and gas output in 2024 alone. 
At COP29 in Baku, more than 1,770 lobbyists — including the heads of major corporations — were granted access, many as guests of the host country Azerbaijan. Their numbers dwarfed almost every country delegation and threatened to drown out the voices of Global South nations, Indigenous peoples, youth, and those who disproportionately bear the brunt of climate impacts. 
ExxonMobil alone sent as many delegates to COP29 as Guyana — a country at imminent risk from rising seas and one where ExxonMobil itself is engaged in offshore oil extraction projects. 

The symmetry is not coincidental; it is structural.

At COP30 in Belém, approximately 599 lobbyists gained access through Party overflow badges that give behind-the-scenes access to the inner workings of negotiations. Major trade associations remained a primary vehicle for influence, with the International Emissions Trading Association bringing 60 representatives, including delegates from ExxonMobil, BP, and TotalEnergies.

As one physician put it bluntly: “When 5,000 fossil fuel lobbyists are allowed to influence our nations’ policies, these are no longer negotiations. It’s an industry convention.

III. The Process Has No Immune System
The structural problem is not just the lobbyists. It is that the UNFCCC process was never designed to defend itself against them.
The UN climate process still lacks a formal conflict of interest policy governing fossil fuel participation.  There is no rule barring a coal executive from sitting in a Party delegation. There is no requirement that participants disclose their financial relationships with polluting industries beyond basic organisational affiliation. Proposals to address this — requiring the exclusion of fossil fuel lobbies from state delegations and mandating full public disclosure of affiliations — have been urged but not adopted.
The June 2026 climate negotiations in Bonn closed amid growing concern over the ability of the UN climate process to deliver action at the required scale, with governments failing to make meaningful progress and in some cases pushing back on already established agreements. 
Decision-making rules allow a small number of states to block progress; representatives from climate-vulnerable communities continue to face obstacles to participation; and the absence of robust safeguards against corporate influence remains unaddressed. 
Meanwhile, the UN climate agency and the UK Met Office project a 75% chance that average global temperatures between 2026 and 2030 will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — the very threshold the Paris Agreement was built to defend.

IV. The COP31 Test


COP31 convenes in Antalya, Türkiye in November 2026 under an unusual co-presidency between Türkiye and Australia, marking what is intended to be a critical transition from negotiation to implementation following the mandates of the Global Stocktake. 
The architecture of previous COPs has created real building blocks. COP30 produced a Global Implementation Accelerator, a Just Transition Mechanism, a climate finance work programme, and Presidency-led roadmaps on forests and transitioning away from fossil fuels. But as analysts observe, COP31 will need to move from frameworks to delivery — and that transition cannot happen while the actors most invested in preventing it are seated at the table.

The co-presidency must publish full team lists, disclose all funding and partnerships, adopt strict conflict-of-interest rules barring sponsorships or consultancies tied to fossil fuel or other high-polluting industries, and release summaries of meetings with external stakeholders.                                       

These are not radical demands; they are basic safeguards that would strengthen legitimacy and set a higher standard for future summits.

 The geopolitical context makes this more urgent, not less. The start of 2026 has demonstrated again how dependence on fossil fuels is closely linked to geopolitical instability — from US energy diplomacy to the disruption of the Strait of Hormuz — and how fossil fuel dependency remains a structural source of instability for energy systems and national economies. 

V. The Deeper Indictment
There is a phrase that deserves to be retired: “the energy transition.” It implies an orderly technical process, as though the world is simply upgrading its infrastructure. What is actually happening is a political confrontation between industries whose survival depends on continued extraction and a planetary system that cannot absorb it.
Over three-quarters of the world’s population lives in countries that are net importers of fossil fuels. High energy prices push up food costs. Inflation fuels political instability. Debt burdens deepen. The fossil fuel crisis has become a development crisis. 
The Caribbean, the Pacific, the Global South broadly — these are not bystanders to a crisis playing out elsewhere. They are its most concentrated victims. When fossil fuel lobbyists overwhelm the delegations of the most vulnerable nations in the negotiating rooms of Baku, Belém, and soon Antalya, they are not merely influencing trade policy. They are, in the most literal sense, determining the survivability of communities that did not cause the crisis.
This is what accountability journalism must name clearly: the delay is not failure. It is outcome. An industry that has operated with impunity inside the process designed to constrain it has extracted exactly what it came for — time.
COP31 is not another chance. It may be among the last ones that matter.

The 592 Guardian holds that verified facts must be stated as facts. The data cited here is publicly available, peer-reviewed, or sourced from credible intergovernmental bodies. The editorial position is our own.

THE GUIANA SHIELD IS BEING REORGANIZED

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

 The 592 GUARDIAN♦EDITORIAL♦ENVIORMENTAL ACCOUNTABILITY

The Guiana Shield Is Being Reorganised — And Guyana Is Watching From the Sidelines    What is happening in Venezuela’s mining belt is not Venezuela’s problem alone– JUNE 2026

The arrest of Nicolás Maduro by American special forces in January 2026 was treated in Guyana largely as a geopolitical curiosity — the end of a neighbourhood nuisance, perhaps even a quiet relief given the years of Essequibo belligerence his government sponsored. That reading was dangerously shallow. What has unfolded since in Venezuela’s Bolívar state is not the tidying up of a failed state. It is the reorganisation of the Guiana Shield — the same ancient geological formation that underlies Guyana’s gold and uranium frontier — under American strategic and commercial direction. Guyana is not a spectator to this process. It is a participant whether it chooses to be or not.

 On June 8th, army helicopters swept into Las Claritas, Venezuela’s ground zero for illegal gold mining in Bolívar state. Thousands of freelance prospectors fled. Days later, the United States launched an air strike killing Héctor “Niño” Guerrero Flores, the boss of the Tren de Aragua crime group. President Trump announced the operation was “co-ordinated closely with our friends in Venezuela.” Within weeks, Western mining executives were on the ground at El Callao, one of Venezuela’s most famous gold complexes. In April, Venezuela’s National Assembly had already passed a mining-reform bill cutting royalties, prolonging concessions and allowing international arbitration of disputes. 

The message was unambiguous: the Orinoco Mining Arc, a Portugal-sized stretch of rainforest and mineral wealth that Chávez nationalised and Maduro surrendered to criminal syndicates, is now open for Western business under American military cover.

 This should command the full attention of every Guyanese citizen who has followed this news—outlet coverage of the GGMC’s nine-year audit backlog, the U92 Energy Corp. uranium play at Kurupung, the G2 Goldfields/GMIN merger and Guyana’s failure to enforce change-of-control provisions, and the gold laundering vectors through the Guiana Shield into Brazil and beyond. 

 What The Economist describes from the Venezuelan side of the Shield is the mirror image of what we have been documenting from the Guyanese side: the same unregulated extractive frontier, the same absent regulatory infrastructure, the same criminal networks, the same geological wealth being approached without the governance architecture to manage it responsibly.

 The Shield Does Not Recognise Our Border

 The Guiana Shield is one of the oldest geological formations on Earth, stretching across Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana and northern Brazil. It holds some of the world’s most significant deposits of gold, diamonds, bauxite and — as the Kurupung case makes plain — uranium. The criminal networks that have exploited it do not organise themselves around the borders drawn by colonial cartographers. Tren de Aragua, whose leadership the Americans just eliminated in Las Claritas, has been documented operating across the Shield. The FARC dissidents and the National Liberation Army, whom The Economist identifies as still active in Venezuela’s mining belt despite the American air strikes, are not going to demobilise. They are, as one Venezuelan mining industry source told the magazine plainly, going to move. “If you clean up one area, they are going to move somewhere else. It’s that simple.”

 Where do they move? Deeper into national parks, says The Economist. Venezuela’s Imataca and Canaima national parks border Guyana. The Pakaraima mountains straddle the frontier. The same jungle that conceals illegal mining operations at Mazoa Hill and along the Cuyuni river system on the Guyanese side connects without interruption to the zone the Americans are now attempting to clear on the Venezuelan side. The displacement of criminal mining networks from Bolívar state is not a solution to the problem of unregulated extraction on the Guiana Shield. 

It is a pressure valve that will push those networks toward the path of least resistance. Guyana needs to be asking right now whether it is that path.

 The Regulatory Vacuum Is the Real Security Risk

 The government of Guyana will point to the Guyana Gold Board, the GGMC, the Environmental Protection Agency and the various bilateral security arrangements with the United States as evidence that the country is not defenceless. These institutions exist. The question this newspaper has been asking for months — and which events in Venezuela now make urgent — is whether they function adequately for the moment we are in.

The GGMC has not produced audited financial statements in nine years. That is not a bureaucratic inconvenience. In a context where criminal networks are being actively displaced from one part of the Guiana Shield toward another, it means that Guyana’s primary regulatory body for gold and mineral extraction cannot account for what has been extracted, by whom, under what conditions, and where it went. The Mazoa Hill controversy and the Cataratas vector we have previously documented are not isolated incidents. They are evidence of a structural gap between the extractive activity occurring on 

 Guyana’s territory and the state’s capacity to govern it.

 The G2 Goldfields/GMIN merger is a related symptom. When the ownership of a major mining concession changes hands through a corporate restructuring and the state’s change-of-control provisions are not enforced, the message sent to the extractive industry — legitimate and otherwise — is that Guyana’s regulatory framework is a formality, not a constraint. That message travels. It is heard in Caracas, in São Paulo, in the offices of commodity traders in Geneva and Singapore who are now making decisions about the post-Maduro Guiana Shield.

And then there is uranium. The U92 Energy Corp. Kurupung project sits in a jurisdiction with

→no domestic regulatory framework for uranium extraction.

→no specialised inspectorate.

→no established environmental liability regime 

→no parliamentary oversight mechanism with the technical capacity to evaluate what is being proposed.

 We have made this argument before on purely governance grounds.                                                                                                    We make it again now on security grounds: a uranium frontier on the Pakaraima border, adjacent to a zone from which armed criminal networks are being displaced by American military operations, is not a situation that a functioning state should approach with a nine-year audit backlog and an unstaffed Data Protection Commission.

 Washington’s New Architecture and Guyana’s Position

 The broader regional picture demands clear-eyed assessment. The Economist documents what it calls the “Trumpification” of Latin America — seven consecutive right-wing presidential victories since January 2025, an ideological convergence around Washington’s priorities on crime, migration and extractive industry, and a network of direct American military co-operation from Ecuador to Venezuela. The PPP government has historically cultivated a careful non-alignment, maintaining relations with Washington, Beijing and Caracas simultaneously. That triangulation is now under structural pressure.

The US-Venezuela arrangement is revealing in its terms. Venezuela under Rodríguez is supplying mineral access, security co-operation and political compliance in exchange for American recognition, sanctions relief, oil export waivers and military protection. Maduro’s Essequibo aggression — the December 2023 referendum, the military mobilisation, the maps redrawn in Caracas — was a product of that previous regime’s political economy. The Rodríguez government, operating under American supervision, has different incentive structures. The Essequibo claim has not been formally withdrawn. But the regime that was prepared to mobilise it militarily has been replaced by one whose survival depends on American goodwill.

This creates a narrow diplomatic window that Guyana should be exploiting with urgency and precision.

 The International Court of Justice case proceeds on its own timeline. But the political conditions that made Venezuelan adventurism possible have shifted significantly. “A Guyanese government with the strategic literacy and institutional capacity to engage this moment could consolidate real security gains. A government that treats it as background noise while managing oil revenues and managing elections is leaving an opening”.

The question of how Georgetown engages Washington in this new regional architecture is not separable from the question of whether Guyana’s extractive governance is adequate to the moment. 

American capital is rushing into the Guiana Shield. American military presence is reorganizing its security environment. American strategic interest in the region’s mineral wealth — gold, uranium, rare earths — is not abstract. 

If Guyana cannot demonstrate that it governs its portion of the Shield with the transparency and accountability that Western investors and institutions nominally require, it will find itself not as a partner in this new architecture but as the next ungoverned frontier to be reorganised by someone else.

What Needs to Happen

This new outlet does not traffic in alarm for its own sake. We state what the evidence requires:                                                                                               
→The GGMC audit backlog must be cleared as a matter of national security, not administrative housekeeping. The government should be asked in Parliament, specifically and on the record, when audited financial statements for 2017 through 2025 will be tabled. No answer is itself an answer.

→The U92 Kurupung uranium project must be paused pending the establishment of a fit-for-purpose regulatory framework. This is not anti-investment. It is the condition for investment that does not create liabilities the Guyanese state cannot manage.

The Parliamentary Sectoral Committee on Economic Services, reduced from monthly to quarterly meetings in the same period that these extractive governance questions have intensified, must be restored to regular function and given the technical support to conduct meaningful oversight of the mining sector.

 The Guyana government must make a formal public assessment of the security implications of the displacement of criminal mining networks from Venezuela’s Bolívar state toward the Pakaraima border region. If that assessment has been made internally, it should be shared with Parliament and the public.

And the PPP government must decide, clearly and on the record, what Guyana’s strategic posture is in the new regional architecture that:                                                                            American policy is constructing. Non-alignment was a coherent position when the region was genuinely multipolar. It becomes incoherence when the Shield on which your economy depends is being reorganised under the military and commercial direction of one power, on your border, right now.

The Guiana Shield does not belong to Washington.

 It does not belong to Caracas. 

A significant portion of it belongs to the people of Guyana.

It is time to govern it like it does.

 The 592 Guardian is an independent accountability journalism outlet. We accept no government advertising and carry no political affiliations.

AK-47s: Guyanese Must Know More

/0 Comments/in , /by

THE 592 GUARDIAN.♦ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM

AK-47s: Guyanese Must Know More

JUNE 2026 BY: GHK LALL

A top PPP Govt worker said that the government was always tracking, in the know.  Everything under control.  In hand, a total of 33 AK-47s.  Not toy guns.  Neither air rifles nor water pistols.  But machines of mass destruction.  Yet, the man reassured Guyanese that the government was on the job.  No need to worry.  It’s then that Guyanese must worry.  What don’t they know?  What is their government not telling them?  And why?  To darken the near perfect visibility that one senior government man spoke of, another senior government official weighed in with “our ports are porous.”  Not that Guyana’s borders are porous.  But that “our ports are porous.”

Question One: is this an admission that those local equivalents of nukes entered through ports so open that they might as well be unmanned?  So non-interfering relative to being non-intrusive outposts that they don’t serve as deterrent or prohibition against the entry of machine-guns?  A machine-gun isn’t an unlicensed weapon.  When with civilians, it’s a prohibited weapon.  For good reason.  Think of a squad of men armed to the teeth with machine-guns rolling up before a Guyanese Police Station.  Think of other small companies, three or five of them, with machine-guns primed for action, in one or several opulent communities in Guyana, and with evil intentions.  I pause.  No interest in agitating fellow citizens.  Interested, though, in alerting all to the risks and exposures, and leave others to ponder these questions.

Why is the government so casual?  Behaving as though the discovery of 33 AK-47s is ordinary.  Unworthy of much urgency.  I’m all for not panicking the population.  Definitely against, on the other, minimizing by pooh-pooing the implications of these destructive armaments abounding in Guyana.  From my perspective, the government is too clever.  Its people far too nifty with soothing words.  In the current circumstances, the rawness of potential dangers must be in the public domain.  With the safety and peace of mind of Guyanese at risk, it is time for the chief national security officer of Guyana, Pres Ali, to inform the nation what the government has, where the government stands.  Two hauls totaling 33 AK-47s do not represent routines. 

The firepower and destructive power make it imperative for Pres Ali to give a statement in his own voice about the implications of these two busts, where the clues point.

One thread is the Venezuelan link.  Syndicato or Tren de Aragua?  State-sponsored or mercenaries for hire?  If the latter, then who are their recruiters and paymasters?  If not either of those two, whose interests are jeopardized (or enhanced)?  What restrains the hand of the PPP Govt?  From divulging the full story.  When the interests of the State are under threat, the public must know.  Their safety is intimately wrapped up in such threats.  Thus, Guyanese should know more.  If, however, the interests of the PPP are under siege, then Guyanese will get what they get, which is nothing.  Could this be part of what has produced such easy nonchalance from government leaders on these developments?  When Guyanese are uncomfortable, their government leaders shouldn’t be as comfortable as they have been. 

Relative to the Opposition, it perplexes that its leaders are not all over these arms bust and the ominous potential of them.

Last, there’s a Guyanese connection that flits on and off the radar.  Smooth as silk, and slipperier than an eel.  An oil-coated one.  What to make of that setup that has a long history of engagement.  Usually followed by evasion.  Clearly, that calls for a tremendous amount of muscle.  Lots of pull and plenty of clout.  Groundbreaking and far-reaching, I would say.  There is much more to this machinegun business than meets the eye.  Kamla is coming up next: protecting her people.

Guyana Dev Bank: Players likely already in Place

/0 Comments/in , /by

THE 592 GUARDIAN|ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM

JUNE 2026 —BY: GHK LALL

Guyana Dev Bank: Players likely already in Place

The Guyana Development Bank (GDB) has generated much excitement.  Not yet fully airborne, but still stirring considerable interest.  Guyanese sit, wait, smile.  They are ready.  One set anticipates what’s in it for them.  To get them off the bottom. 

Other Guyanese (guess who?) have their plans ready on how to milk this bank till it geh sickly and paglee.  For those who need clarity, rest easy.  Coming up shortly.

 The key players have already been handpicked.  Ready to rumble.  The PPP had a handful of names to choose from to move the GDB up the ladder, along the way.  There’s the way, truth, and life of Jesus.  Not the PPP way, regrettably.         

The PPP Govt has its own way.   Radically different.  In substance, results.  To condition Guyanese hopefuls, I conclude that senior positions-GDB chair, deputy chair, and CEO are as good as filled.  Done deals.  Before that GDB bill becomes law.  What’s there to debate?  There’s a seven-seat majority.  Who cares what the other sides, any Guyanese, think?  Including those who think less of the PPP’s standards of staffing?  Overseers and officers, for example.  Seven seats provide that electricity-sparking confidence [and disdain].

Qualifications for the jobs of chair, deputy chair, and CEO earn top marks for the following.  They don’t have to be thieves, but it helps

Known thieves are prized by the PPP Govt.  The logic is majestic.  Whoever teef caan taak.  The best are party loyalists who prosper when matters are upside down, shrouded in secrecy. 

Try this example.  The PPP loves overseers, commissioners, bank watchmen, senior bank officers who see a dog, hear a dog, know it’s a dog, but sell it as a duck or a donkey.

  Whoever heard a dog that sounds or looks like one of those creatures?  Best of all, are those who know how to keep their mouths shut, whatever the crimes committed.  It’s better when they’re part of the white-collar crimewave waiting inside that new bank.  With such trusted personnel seated, secrets stay secret.  Trouble is contained.  What happened in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas.  Substitute GDB for local color.

With $40 billion around, there’s plenty for PPP boys and girls to play around with, have fun.  There’s a guarantee, two to be accurate.  Freedom House has their back.  And Office of the President has its own magistracy and rubberstamp ready

Nah maan! Nat dese peeple.  Dem is good PPP people.  Look how much ting deh duh fuh de paaty.  Can’t abandon them.  Cannot, will not, throw them under the bus.  Not with all those sharks waiting to rip them to pieces.  It’s basic democracy: taking care of one’s own is taking care of business.  They are due first bites at the fruits of victory and policy.  So, what if they mess up, make their hands fast?  Stuff happens.  Nobody is perfect.

Qualifications for the jobs of chair, deputy chair, and CEO earn top marks for the following.  They don’t have to be thieves, but it helps.

 The government is quick thinking: help to fix the loan documents.  Fix is preferred.  For other people: wrong color, wrong hairstyle, and wrong relationships, the GDB is just as warm and hospitable.  Welcome, sir, madam.  Take a number.  Have a seat.  Just a little wait.  The staff is out to lunch, in a meeting, gone golfing, or off to Congress.  Free seats.  Free updates.  Few could be so classless or tasteless to want more.  Wait until they hear ‘this loan application is receiving the highest consideration.  The bull just began.  No money, no love.  No $3 million loan.  Those kinds of Guyanese are on their own.  Stage is set.  Law ready. 

The games begin.  The chair’s in place.  I think that the whole kit and kaboodle (PPP kin)-chiefs and cooks are like corruption Oreos. 

Devilishly pious on the outside, wickedly devious inside.  A bank with a shank.

Guyana Development Bank: Can be great, Can be grotesque

/0 Comments/in , /by

THE 592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM♦ JUNE 2026

Guyana Development Bank: Can be great, Can be grotesque

The PPP Govt-initiated $40 billion Guyana Development Bank (Bank) can be great.  Ordinary Guyanese, poor but harboring inspired ideas, lack capital, but an opportunity beckons.  Opportunity to rise from where they are to what they envision could be, should be.  Again, compliments to the PPP Govt for this brainchild.  What has high potential for individual, family, and community prosperity?                         Let it never be said that I didn’t extol the government.

Much has been written about the Bank.  Its innate goodness, noble charter, inspiring character.  Gnawing concerns persist.  Still, no tainting to this offering by dealing in who defends for a dollar.  Or the rancidly partisan who behold only the worst.  I see potential for the worst malfeasances in this Bank.  I detect that it can be a lifeline to Guyanese who need the monetary boost.  Above bottom-house, beyond street corners, out of the economic lowlands so prone to floods of woes that there’s weeping.  Only weeping.

I stated my thinking, position.  Another is presented.  Three precedents offered.  Should suffice.                                         There is a Natural Resource Fund Act/Law.  I point not to loopholes.  I point to its demand for “transparency and accountability.”  Who argues with laws with such clauses embedded?  Plus, withdrawals used for “national development priorities.”  Music.  Easy listening.  Guyanese listened, heard.  From a Guyana Government official, that rarest of rarities: Guyana Scholar.  He disclosed how the billions (U.S.) withdrawn from the NRF were spent in three words: “national development priorities.”  Three words “transparency and accountability”, as enshrined in the NRF Law, begat three more: “national development priorities”, also incorporated in that same law.  No more.  Not a fourth word. 

If this is what Guyanese get for spending clarity from a Guyana Scholar, what prospects from Guyana’s handpicked political dunces? 

Not one dollar, not one million, not one billion, could be shared, relative to spending specifics.  Commingling conquering accountability.  The words of a law of Guyana taken and hurled into the face of citizens, by one of its reputed best.  It’s the raw reality of Guyana’s “accountability” for its largest savings account, pursuant to law.  What fate awaits the Guyana Development Bank?

Next, there’s a law birthed 14 years ago that empowers Guyanese to access unclassified, nonconfidential, non-national security information.

  The law rusts, rots.  Guyanese seeking access have been mostly dismissed.  Light slap.  Other petitioners got dismissed, then degraded.  The law is there.  The mechanism is there.  Where is the access to information sought, as the law provides?  From that second precedent, I move to the $40 billion Guyana Development Bank.  Would obscurity to protect be among the primary workings of this multibillion-dollar Bank?  Protect who and for what? 

Ignored today are favoritism, cronyism, and nepotism.  May those never dawn.

 Only the Bank’s honest duty, transparency, and accountability.  What road ahead for this Bank that could be a flagship of incorruptibility?  The identification of its controllers (likely already selected) should inform accordingly.

Last, there is the crime of statutory rape.  When underage children are abused, that’s statutory rape.  Official reports state that 584 statutory rapes were committed in the last five years (2020-25).  The law mandates the charge of statutory rape.  Children cannot consent.  Which rapists were charged?  How many of the 584 statutory rapists were even approached by the Guyana Police, other government institutions?  Dr. Vindya Persaud (Minister) and Dr. Clifton Hicken (Police Commissioner) are respectfully invited to help: how many charged?  Only the number.  Easy for a government grown fond of its own statistics.

For the PPP Govt, for PPP leaders, there are some questions.  Why are lawbreakers (statutory rapists) elevated to parliament as lawmakers?  Why are they not charged?  There’s One Guyana optics.  And a large constituency to be kept happy.  But, by God, at the price of parliamentary obscenity?  Even when children are assaulted, and one ending it all.  It calls for an extraordinarily obscene breed of political leaders to condone first, then reward.

Thus, three examples: Oil Fund billions, access to information, and statutory rapes, as contexts.  There are governing laws for each, like the Bank.  How different will the Guyana Development Bank be?  The people’s patrimony and prosperity, their peace of mind, jeopardized.  The lifeblood of democracy (information) blocked, poisoned, then extinguished.  Protection of Guyana’s young bartered for filthy political mileage.  Laws exist for all three areas. 

Yet there are these inarguable, destructive conditions in Guyana’s environment.  Now comes this $40 billion Guyana Development Bank.  It can be a boon for the poor and hopeful. 

Maybe a bonanza for the schemers, defrauders, that makeup over 90% of PPP governance, PPP stewardship, PPP morality and integrity.

 

Soon, Guyanese shall see.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙨 𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙂𝙪𝙮𝙖𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙤𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙪𝙩𝙡𝙚𝙩 𝙘𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙘𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙘, 𝙥𝙤𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙧𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙖𝙛𝙛𝙖𝙞𝙧𝙨.

Iran: Two victory parades, Then both cancelled

/0 Comments/in , , /by

THE 592 GUARDIAN ♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY♦TRUTH

Iran: Two victory parades, Both cancelled

OP-ED BY: GHK LALL

The controllers of Tehran call it a victory.  The Washington dealmaker insists he came out ahead.  Perhaps, both sides won.  Skeptics can split the difference.  My take is simple.  Somebody got out-wheeled, left with the wrong side of that peace deal.  Scratch the Persians.  Hurts to say that as an American.  But what other options are on the table?

First, there were bombs to beat the ayatollahs into submission.  Some did bite the dust.  The survivors threw more dust back at Washington and its chief bluffer.  The formula was old, battle-tested.  The friend of my enemy is my enemy.  Neighborhood airport and assets targeted.  Some screamed bloody murder behind the scenes. 

Happens to those who grow soft from sweet living.  Who needs nukes?  Why, when there are those Achilles heels right nearby?  From punishing embargoes to bunker busters, and the men in turbans still held out.  I had warned that their kind of pitched battle is not CNN material.  Nor the type that pleases Fox News and Friends.  These people know hardship.  They have weathered from Leonidas to Alexander the Great. 

They are still standing.  A little bruised and black-and-blue.  But still standing.  Fighting spirit intact.  The spirit of martyrdom itching for a showdown.

Have soldiers arrayed in a ring?  Bring ’em on!  A ring of fire is waiting.                                                                                                                     Somehow, somebody with some sense in DC finally prevailed.  This is not America’s war.  This is all Netanyahu.  A desperate gamble to get free land and lavish oil supplies.  A couple of bombs, a few dead civilians, a loss of that feeling of invincibility is a cheap price to pay.  A better Iron Dome could be built.  The U.S. Congress would see that it’s funded.  What, do otherwise, and risk losing being re-elected?

The champion warrior and master dealmaker found that his book was out of pages.  What to do?  Bring in Rawalpindi.  The Swiss had reserved a conference room. 

Iran took a battering, but got home safely.  Money.  Security.  Guarantee.  They wrote their own deal book.  So, what did Mr. Manifest Destiny take home to the American people? 

A dog with its tail between its legs.  His own people are already having a fun time, kicking it from left to right. 

 When the kicking is done, hundreds of billions are still needed.  Gone are those bad ole days of not negotiating with terrorists.  Get used to the New World Order.  In Guyanese: knack gah knack bak.  It is not easy for a man accustomed to do the smacking to get smacked around.

Hello!  What about nukes?  Well, what about them?  The Iranians bought time.                                                                                                  Washington says that’s fine.  Then concoct some strange lines.  To justify.  Pacify Netanyahu.  Smooth things over at home and abroad.  It’s smooth sailing in the Strait of Hormuz.  Never heard of something so straightforward getting so tangled up, mined up, muddied up. 

What’s next in the cauldron that’s the Middle East?  Netanyahu isn’t a fellow to take his licks lying down.  He is already plotting.  Weighing whether to rollout his own marbles.  Activating that facility buried in the desert.

Desperate men losing friends fast think the unthinkable.  Attempt the desperate, the face-saving. 

 If there could have been Dresden and Frankfurt-in-Main in Germany almost a hundred years ago, there could be Teheran.  Teach dose peeple a lesson.

Listen up, people.  Get this straight.  There’s a new bully in town.  No 80-year-old washed up has been playing at James Cagney or Russell Crowe.  If there are any people good at playing mad, there are none better than the Iranians.  They hold the cards.  They wear the smirk.  To prove.  Ceasefire shaky.  Straits of Hormuz closing.                                                                                    Still working at figuring out which side got the better deal?  Keep on figuring.                                                                                                                    Continue playing the fool.  Risk being taken for a sucker, another fall guy.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙨 𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙂𝙪𝙮𝙖𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙤𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙪𝙩𝙡𝙚𝙩 𝙘𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙘𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙘, 𝙥𝙤𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙧𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙖𝙛𝙛𝙖𝙞𝙧𝙨

GECOM Seats -Laws don’t make Men, Men make Laws

/0 Comments/in , /by
THE 592 GUARDIAN♦ ACCOUBTABILITY♦INTEGRITY♦TRUTH

GECOM Seats -Laws don’t make Men, Men make Laws

A wise political veteran weighed in on the thickening differences over GECOM commissioners.  The pros and cons.  The issues of resignations or terminations, and replacements.  What the Constitution says, and where silence filled the place of substance.  Impressive, I say.  There were many intersections.  Constitution.  Politics.  Mathematics.  Logic.  Leadership.  Practices.  Precedents.  Then, still more.  Overpowering, even more impressive, I submit.  What I offer pales in comparison.  Anemic.  Hopefully still meaningful, in this, my last round in this ring.  A little, not much.  Yet what should convey how men function differently in testing environments.  Respond to the prompts of different stimuli.

Oil blocks.  Two went out of Guyana’s hands under a cloud.  Secrecy.  A PPP big man said no law broken.  He was right according to the law.  Because there was no literal provision in the law against how those oil blocks changed hands.  Though he was right, all Guyana knew that he had it wrong.  Wrong when two tranches of the people’s precious inheritance secretly went from one hand to another.  Strange.  If aboveboard, why go underground?  In such circumstances, no law is needed to differentiate right from wrong.  Not even schooling.  Only native intelligence.  Some basic instincts.  The PPP Big Man who said no law was broken forget something.  Men make laws.  Laws don’t make men.  But, a man without the benefit of any law, with the worst constitution (or none) knows when he just must be a man.  What it takes.  Where he must stand.  How he must be.  To grow from a small man to a big man.  Whatever the education one has, there’s none to beat that kind.  Thus, I stand.

From two oil blocks, I proceed to Oil Money.  The stewardship of it, for which the law provides.  Dr. Terrence Campbell used a sophisticated word: “rubberstamp.”  It has common utility.  Then, there’s its dark side: uncommon indecency.  What a rubberstamp smears over.  When rubberstamps are put to such use, it’s celebrated here.  All Guyana can say that Terrence Campbell has it wrong.  I will swear that he has it right.  Is right on the money.  Too close for the comfort of the people who suddenly didn’t want him around it (or in their company). 

Who could be so self-degrading, an ignoramus, to swallow “national development priorities”, and conclude that their oversight responsibilities are done?  Apologies to Dr. Terrence Campbell.  But that’s not a rubberstamp.  It’s a used condom. 

Guyanese are being taken for skunks.  For politeness, I subbed skunks for another word that spells almost like it, and sounds and rhymes with it.

From oil blocks and oil money, to an (that) oil contract.  Another PPP Big Man insisted that ‘review and renegotiate’ will be the fate of all contracts.  In his sleep he had a dream.  Exxon and retention of political power.  A safe harbor was desperately needed.  Sanctity of contract was belatedly discovered, used to rescue befogged minds.  I invite Guyanese to form a jury.  Safe harbor or the sixth sense of wily political operators prioritizing protection of their own skin.  For country or men hungry for dirty power. 

 

Last, Framers of the Constitution are dead.  Refiners are alive, but might as well be not.  Such specimens of the living, walking dead they have become.  Constitutions don’t make men.  Men make constitutions.  Wrangle ever after. 

Leaders can put their heads together to find a way out of their GECOM impasse.  To find a commonsense, workable, out-of-court settlement, as such.  There are three seats in contention.  Agree to assign one to each.  Far from Solomonic logic.  Just compromise that leads to a smoother path, higher level.  Didn’t vote for the one-seat Guyanese.  But now vote for her to get one.  To build the broken.  To shout where there’s silence.  In the Constitution. 

Let’s not muzzle our minds amidst great darkness.  We have had 60 years of liberty and not advanced one step.  Six minutes could help Guyana get somewhere.