Archive for category: GHK Lall

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.

THE 592 GUARDIAN ♦ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM FOR GUYANA JULY 2026

A Farm, a Felony -Guyana’s Relativity Theory

OPINION BY: GHK LALL 

Five years are an eternity.  Cold-blooded murder.  A trail quickly gone cold.  Cold trail or calculated coverup?  A family left with the chill of their tears.  There was the uneasy feeling that missing links ought not to be.  What linkages, missing or not, and why?  One thing was certain: the whole story, the true story, of the Fagundes (Paper Shorts) execution was not forthcoming.  Then another: it shouldn’t be that unsolvable.  And still another: operation of law, application of law, enforcement grittiness and energy, and blindfolded justice were shadows of themselves.  Now, I follow this trail of untimely death, the passage of time, and another untimely development: the discovery of a farm.

What does a farm have to do with a heinous felony?  One that spilled its blood all over Guyanese consciousness. 

Neither a body nor any telltale splatter of blood was found on the farm.  Both savaged the peace and curdled on the pavement of the aptly named Main Street.  Yet, when I think of this, the question is why is a farm and many felonies coming up close to one another?  In other words, no mention of a farm, no mention of any felony.  Strange country, this Guyana is.  For five years, silence reigned. 

But like Banquo’s ghost in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, so also the ghost of Mr. Paper Shorts wouldn’t remain still.  The timing is immaculate.  Follow me.  If pain is added to the Fagundes family, apologies.  But no eggs cracked, no scrambled eggs.  Perhaps, unscrambled fits better.

Murder occurred, stayed underground for five long, punishing years.  Murder took less than five short days to be exhumed.  Maybe, with wheels spinning furiously, it was five hours, if not five minutes.  For a murder to be retrieved from the deepfreeze and paraded before the Guyanese public.  When developments are too pat, that’s when I rock back, reel in any slack, and work to crack the code.  From American football, I share sporting folklore: the best offense is an aggressive defense.  Attempting to takedown inspires greater efforts at returning the favor -twofold, threefold, manifold.  The development in the shadow of America’s Fourth of July ecstasies was of a placid farm, babbling brooks, clandestine nooks and crannies, and then Gotterdammerung.  A blitzkrieg: murder, Maimi Vice equivalents, more mystery.

In a jiffy, there’s a fluent, compelling story for citizens.  A suspect resurrected.  A circle of suspected involved cornered and corralled.  Before the farm, there was nobody.  Immediately after the farm discovery, there are more warm bodies than a submerged submarine surfacing.  This has all the precision timing of a well-made Swiss watch.  Swiss or Guyanese, that’s my thrust.  What I think, where I stand.  The clock ticks.  It also stinks.  Uncanny how after the first leaf and stone of that farm were arrayed in public display, that a murder was dug up and similarly displayed.  Where suspects only existed under the radar in earlier times, in these stormy times, those same suspects now participate in primetime presentations.

In all this, the PPP Govt’s well-refined art form is exhibited.  What works for it, but what also reveals.  When the PPP Govt has no defense, deflection becomes its flaming sword.  Deflection follows denial and precedes damnation.  Are all those not unfolding in tight formation?  In efforts at locating some elusive credibility.  What are the final objectives: to nail an opponent and be done with an inconvenience, an irrepressible, insoluble nuisance?  When the law takes forever to find its feet in Guyana, then lawlessness is a marathon runner.  For when there is in inversion of justice, what law?  When the timeline of a murder is seemingly tampered with, then whither honesty?  I behold the PPP Govt’s abandonment of all interests in, all claims to, all pretensions at, morality.  Cocooned in the pile of obscenity is a travesty.  Of justice.  Of conscience.  In toto, Guyanese are dealing with more than a crisis of circumstances combining.  They are living with a crisis in governance.  Why was this murder allowed to fester restlessly for five years?  And only now given oxygen?  

I wish I could hold a brief, stand in defense, for all parties in this deformity.  I cannot.  I hear and read.  I see, think, and speak.

THE 592. GUARDIAN.♦ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM FOR GUYANA 

Halfwit Accounting: Half for Exxon, Half  for Guyana?

The time for sparring is over.  So, also, is room for dancing around and dodging.  A full, accurate, credible 50 percent of oil profits is now due to Guyana.  Exxon must be a partner.  An authentic partner with accounts that match.  The PPP Govt must put aside its own priorities and push for a real half of profits now the right of Guyana.  The time is now.  Let there be a genuine half that can absorb the weight of any scrutiny.  Override the language of all controversies.  First, the surrounding facts that overwhelm any arguments, any differences.

 At this point, everyone is urged (Guyanese and Americans) to note some discretions that I exercised.  First, Q1 2026 is ignored.  But the US$4.5 billion outstanding should have been gone, or close to eliminated, in that first quarter, considering daily production rates.  Second, using a prewar lower average of US$60 per barrel, and a 7-day Exxon operation/production week at 900,000 barrels daily that is US$4.8 billion (900,000 X 89 X US$60).  Third, using that lean oil price number (after one full month of war from Feb 28) and 75 percent taken from the top (post royalty), Guyana would have owed Exxon less than US$1 billion when the second quarter commenced.  I invite others to challenge, take apart, my arithmetic that hands Exxon money and time on a platter.  And to the disadvantage of this country and its peoples.

With the full second quarter of production and higher oil prices behind Exxon’s belt, there is no way that the balance in the cost bank is not history.  Gonzo.  No mas.  Over and out for the count.  In other words, what was due to Exxon, that has been honored in full.  Therefore, this second quarter is crucial, represents the beginning of a new oil earnings era for Guyana.  I call it hard.  I charge at it head-on.

Guyana’s half of profits can no longer be half of 25 percent.  The half from that 25 percent that is left after 75 percent cost recovery.  Whatever cost recovery there had to be, it has been recovered in full.  Simply put: no cost recovery, no cost bank.  For emphasis and to beat this one to death: no 75 percent to be dealt with means that there is no 25 percent to be contended with, left to be divided.  Forget about an average price of US$80 a barrel.  At a lower average price of US$70 a barrel in the second quarter, and 900,000 barrels produced daily, that is US$5.6 billion in oil revenues.  Exxon and the PPP Govt are now standing over US$5.6 billion for Q2 2026 alone.  The sharing now has to be, must be, half for one and the same half for the other from 100 percent of revenues minus operating expenses.

I watch to observe where Exxon stands on this, what it will present to Guyanese.  Last, I watch to learn where Guyana’s PPP Govt is, and how it approaches this open-and-shut situation.  I exhort both to do justice by the Guyanese people.

THE 592 GUARDIAN 

THE 592 GUARDIAN ♦ TRUTH ♦ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM

Guyanese:  Study the Sequence, Get the Dutty Story

OPINION BY: GHK LALL July 2026

I marvel at the spectacle of this country.  Institutional and political grandeur.  One that involves holding pattern, timing pattern.  Just like the nerve-wracking work of air traffic controllers.  I urge my fellow Guyanese: the sequence, study the sequence.  There’s the rich story.  It was deadly.  It’s also a beauty, with proper regard for family.

 March 2021: a man executed in the street.  Cold.  Calculated.  Within a stone throw of the official residence of Guyana’s chief governor.  A man with a young family; guests usually assembled, milling around.  A lethal shooting that outraged, a slap on Pres Ali’s face.  It happened in the too-close-for-comfort vicinity of Main Street, didn’t it?  The president didn’t seem too anxious.  Perhaps, the frenzied ecstasies of the bruising 2019-2020 elections still burned brightly.  Unready to cool amid the celebrations.

 But a killer volley near the president’s front yard had called for all-hands-on-duty and an all points bulletin.  To track the killer(s).  Despite COVID-19 roadblocks, surveillance cameras, and covert intel, law enforcement came up empty.  The charred remains of a torched vehicle.  Dead men tell no tales.  Vehicles put to death carry their secrets to the grave.  A family grieved.  Scant sympathy.  Clamored for justice.  Nothing.  A case grew cold.  The deep freeze waited.  The back of it.  A police sergeant spoke.  A person of interest spoke through a suit.  There, the matter of an execution style killing slumbered feverishly.  The blood of a man murdered crying from the freezer for justice.  From where?  By whose hand?

 March 2021 to June 2026: In this country, friendships have contributed enormously to subversions of justice.  Verifiable travesties in and of themselves.  In Guyana, warring foes may lead to the rediscovery of that elusive entity called justice.

 July 2026: It took developments over a farm for redevelopment of interest in that Main Street cold case.  What became too hot to remain in cold storage.  One man made himself into a nuisance, a bigger one.  Through disclosures about a farm with fowls and what released a foul smell.  Another man took to the airwaves to holler to the world about murder and assorted other felonious malignancies.  All part of a tsunami laden with catastrophe and tragedy.  What’s ugly and dirty.  Stick religiously to the sequence, citizens.  For immediately before, or too close after, a suspect is arrested for the Main Street murder. After five cruel and dismal years, there is this breathtaking swiftness serving as crime resolution and governance in this country.

 I think that if there was no farm exposure, there would be no talk of murder and suspected murderers.  And no arrest for the dirty, rotten crime.  It’s my conviction, the sum of reflections, persuasions, interpretations.  I  suppose Guyana’s chief legal teacher would be beside himself with joy.  At how the wheels of justice roll in this country.  The speed of their revolutions, the directions that they follow, the time and places of their terminations.  My god!  This is the law operation at its blindfolded, avoirdupois embroidered, majestic best.  For years such matters were under lockdown.  Not a whiff. Not a leaf stirring.  Then, an estate with its states of disarray, dispute, and distress are unchained.  Revelation begets revelation.  One crime alleged.  Another crime-a set of them-thrown right back into the face of the first accuser.  Time does have a way of baring its bottom. 

Secrets.  I behold tit-for-tat: take that; let’s prove who has more fat.  To absorb.  Roll with the punches.  Smell cleaner.  Cleaner? Someone has to be kidding, a confirmed jester.

 I started with the sequence.  Softly I leave my fellow citizens with the same sequence: a murder.  A shrug.  A lull.  A whistleblower.  Development dashed.  Cold case.  Cold front.  Then a farm.  Next, stops pulled out.  Last, the bottom falling out.  It sounds and feels like anancy story. 

It is Guyana’s political and institutional reality.  Facts on the ground will always defeat criminal fictions.  Be they political, social, or environmental. 

Guyanese are now living under a full-fledged crime wave.  Checkout who denied.  Now check who disclose.

THE 592 GUARDIAN ◊ Independent Accountability Journalism For Guyana

The Ali Farm -From Bankroller to Blackmailer

Almost without exception, Guyanese across the board, are familiar about the kind of upstanding citizen and leader that Pres Ali is.  They have a good idea about the quality of his character, the beauties of his activities.  Their leader is a winner.  He touches mud and magic happens: many minerals massed on his table.  I need some of that to rub off on me.  Thus, I stay close to the president.  As he goes, I go.

The man, main voice, from WIN, Mr. Mohamed dropped his aerial bombardment flush on the head of Mohamed Irfaan Ali.  It’s the president and none other.  Sparks have since flew.  Shards of expensive plate glass whizzing dangerously close.  The record shows that Pres Ali has not taken what WIN Mohamed shared publicly sitting down.  He went on an offensive of his own.  The land is ole story.  There are loans.  Documents to burst the archives.  Pres Ali saved his secret weapon for last.  It is one dipped in deadly curare: blackmail.  Azruddin Mohamed delivered his message express mail.  A U.S. carrier, I think.  Pres Ali fired back even quicker.  There’s his verbal delivery.  Blackmail.  Well, blow me down!

Wasn’t it the PPP of Ali, Jagdeo, and Nandlall, who once treasured the Mohamed Family above all else?  Yes or no, folks?  Was it not the PPP Govt that turned against the Mohamed family that was so good to its members (bank rolled, remember?) And turned the father and son over to the tender ministrations of Uncle Sam.  It would be helpful if any of the superstars in the Office of the President, including old Burnham ones, could say what kind of mail is that one?  Drink a man rum.  Feast at his table.  Dance to his music.  Tek out selfees wid he.  Collect he bankroll.  Then, tun pun he.  Wha is dah, white mail, greenmail, or blackmail?  My interest is not in who blackmail who first.  But how is it that blackmail enters the political frame?  Pres Ali is reported to be a very clever fellow.  Therefore, he ought to know (or be advised) that the claim of blackmail doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on.  Not when it’s open-air.  Not when everyone is watching, listening, and following the sequence of actions.  Because Pres Ali enjoys such a special relationship with the U.S., he should reach out to Excellency Theriot and have her check with the FBI on the validity of what I assert.

Further, blackmail caan wuk, Mistah President.  Not when there are documents.  Like transport(s) for the Long Creek lands.  Like the loan applications.  Like the loan approvals with rubberstamps, revenues stamps, raised seals, authorized commercial bank personnel, and in the originals.  I would hope that the loan officers and land officers have not all left Guyana to take up permanent residence in the U.S. in the last few days.  Mohamed could tri wah evah blackmail he want.  But a man of the resourcefulness and adaptability of Dr. Irfaan Ali has his own mail.  They don’t give doctorates to dummies.  It is not snail mail.  It is not mail with a different kind of gender identifier.  What Pres Ali has is a mailed fist.  Waan fuh mess wid mee?  Ah readee!

The point I go to great lengths to make is that Pres Ali doesn’t have to bluff.  Or engage in any boisterous bacchanalian bravado.  He has the best mail available.  His standing with personal honesty.  Incumbency advantage.  The numerous tools and vast resources of the state (an oil rich state).  Plus, the Guyanese people believe in him.  Well, sort of, and only some.  How many for him this week versus last week, that’s the question?  Guyanese catching hell, and there’s no question about their condition.  Pres Ali has to ride beyond the blackmail he claims and put out the cleanest slate.

If there are hiccups, he might as well cleanout his desk.  Grace and peace, Mr. President.