Rooted, Not Trapped: Why Our Communities Must Become Their Own Republics

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

 Rooted, Not Trapped: Why Our Communities Must Become Their Own Republics

OPINION BY: Hem Kumar October 2026

“Rooted”: An idea  is born to support Guyanese at home  from the diaspora “

“For  many watching Guyana’s future unfold, communal agricultural and commercial projects may be the tool ordinary people have long needed: a real chance to build, prosper and “fly” right here at home—without being forced to leave their land, their families or their hopes behind.”         “More than four  decades ago, I left Guyana for the United States. Like so many who have departed our shores, I did not leave because I stopped loving Guyana. I left because circumstances made the future difficult to see, and because opportunity seemed to exist somewhere beyond the horizon.”                                                                                             
“The United States gave me chances for which I remain grateful. It gave me room to work, to build, to learn, and to achieve things that may not have been possible had I remained at home. Yet after all these years, after every accomplishment and every lesson, after having realized what many deem the quintessential American dream, there remains a feeling that has never entirely left me: nostalgia”

There are moments when I wish I had never had to leave.

That feeling is not a rejection of the life I have built abroad. It is an acknowledgment of what migration costs. When we leave, we may carry our country with us, but we also leave behind family, friendships, familiar places, traditions, and a part of ourselves that no new passport, address, job, or achievement can replace.

That is why the story of Ismely Álvarez de Cubas and his  initiative, “Arraigados”—“Rooted”—resonates with me. His message is not that people must be prevented from leaving. It is not that those who migrate have failed their country, or that the countryside should be romanticized as a place where people must endure hardship in silence.

His  message, as I understand it, is that a person should be able to build a dignified life at home.

Conceived around these three strategic pillars 

The project operates as a supportive community framework built around : 

  •   Agricultural Training: Described by Ismely as the “DNA” of the project, education is used to cultivate both professional skills and personal growth.
  • Global Network Exchange: The project is designed to bridge geographical distances by connecting local Cuban farmers with professionals, business mentors, and peers in countries like Spain, Europe, Chile ,Brazil, and the United States. 
  • Two-Way Mentorship: International mentors offer technical expertise, resources, and business testimonies. In return, the exchange provides those coming from wealthier global contexts a perspective on human resilience and material realities in Cuba.
  • 3. Long-Term Vision

Rather than functioning as a standard top-down charity, Arraigados is modeled on faith, community cooperation, and shared human values. Ismely’s declared long-term target is to scale the initiative over the next decade into a self-sustaining global community unified by work, continuous training, and spiritual values. 

That should not be a radical idea. It should be the basic obligation of every country to its people.

We Must Stop Waiting

For too long, Guyanese and Caribbean people have been trained to think of national development as something that must come from above.

We wait for a government announcement. We wait for an investor. We wait for a grand project, a new road, a new contract, a foreign company, an election, a ministerial promise, or another speech about prosperity that never reaches the street, the village, the farm, or the household

We have become accustomed to looking at the national picture and measuring our hope by what takes place in Georgetown, Havana, Bridgetown, Port of Spain, or other capitals. But national plans have meaning only if they improve daily life in the communities where people live.

A nation is not an abstract map. It is a collection of communities.

It is the village, the ward, the housing scheme, the farming district, the riverine settlement, the market, the school, the local health centre, the church, the mosque, the mandir, the community ground, and the homes where parents wonder whether their children will have to leave to find a future.

If we want to keep our people rooted, then we must first make our communities places where people can see a future.

Every Community Is a Republic

My hope is that those at home begin to see the power of the communal setting first.

What we want is every village and community to start thinking of itself as its own republic—not separate from Guyana, not hostile to the State, and not detached from the national interest, but responsible for its own renewal.

A community republic is built on a simple idea: the people who live closest to the problems must become central to creating the solutions.

If a village lacks employment, its people should organize around the opportunities available: agriculture, agro-processing, fishing, small manufacturing, construction, tourism, crafts, transportation, technology, services, culture, or trade.

If young people are idle, the community must not simply condemn them. It must ask what skills, mentorship, training, work opportunities, sports programmes, arts initiatives, and entrepreneurial support can be created around them.

If farmers struggle, the community should explore shared machinery, buying groups, storage facilities, transportation arrangements, farmers’ markets, cooperative processing, and direct connections to consumers.

If roads, drainage, bridges, schools, clinics, or public spaces are neglected, the community must document the failures, organize its evidence, engage public officials, and demand answers with one united voice.

When people act separately, they are easily ignored. When they organize around a common purpose, they become a force.

Liberation Begins With Unity

Liberation does not begin only in Parliament, the Cabinet Office, or the boardroom of an oil company. It begins when ordinary people recognize that they have more power together than they do alone.

The most enduring progress rarely comes from one politician, one benefactor, or one foreign investor. It comes when a community decides that it will no longer wait passively for others to define its future.

That does not mean government has no responsibility. Government has an enormous responsibility. Citizens are entitled to competent public services, accountable institutions, fair laws, transparent spending, quality education, health care, infrastructure, security, and equal access to opportunity.

But while we demand these things—and we must demand them—we cannot surrender our own agency. We must not become spectators in our own country.

A community that unites can establish a development committee, map its assets, identify its most urgent needs, mentor its young people, support its elderly, form savings groups, create cooperatives, promote local enterprises, and establish clear priorities for government engagement

It can learn to ask better questions: Where is the money allocated for our area? Who received the contract? What was promised? What was delivered? Who is accountable? What is the timeline? Why are we being left behind?

These are not acts of rebellion. They are acts of citizenship.

Rootedness Needs Economic Dignity

Still, we must be realistic. Unity alone cannot feed a family, repair a tractor, bring electricity to a community, or make up for a failing health system. Communities can organize, but they cannot be asked to carry burdens that properly belong to the State.

To keep people rooted, there must be economic dignity.

Our farmers need land security, reliable drainage and irrigation, equipment, fuel, inputs, credit, storage, processing facilities, roads, and fair access to markets. Our fisherfolk need docks, cold storage, safety equipment, market access, and protection of marine resources. Our small businesses need affordable financing, stable electricity, digital connectivity, transparent licensing, and public procurement that does not favour only the politically connected.

Our young people need good schools, modern training, apprenticeships, access to technology, safe spaces, and a fair opportunity to start something of their own. They must be able to imagine a life at home that is not defined by dependence, political connections, or the next remittance from relatives overseas.

This is where projects like “Rooted” carry an important lesson. Training, values, environmental awareness, and practical support can help people recover confidence in their ability to build where they are. But training must lead somewhere. It must lead to the ability to produce, earn, save, invest, employ, and live with self-respect.

The Diaspora Must Be a Bridge

Those of us in the diaspora have a role beyond sending money home in emergencies.

We can share skills, mentor young people, connect local entrepreneurs with wider markets, help communities develop proposals, support scholarships, contribute equipment, and advocate for better governance. We can use our distance not to lecture those at home, but to create bridges between what we have learned abroad and what can be built at home.

But we must also remain humble.

People living in Guyana today understand the pressures they face better than anyone abroad can. They are the ones dealing with high prices, inadequate services, unemployment, crime, poor infrastructure, and the daily uncertainty that leads so many to consider migration. Our responsibility is to listen, support, connect, and amplify—not to impose.

The diaspora should not become a replacement for government. No country should depend indefinitely on the remittances and sacrifices of those it failed to retain. The diaspora can assist, but national development requires accountable leadership and policies that make productive life possible.

A Country Worth Choosing

I do not wish to tell anyone not to leave Guyana. Every person has the right to seek education, safety, work, and opportunity wherever they can find it. Migration has opened doors for many of us, and it has helped countless families survive.

But I want us to reach the day when Guyanese leave because they choose to explore the world, not because they feel forced to escape hardship at home.

I want young people to see their village not as a place to flee, but as a foundation from which they can grow. I want them to see agriculture as business and innovation, not backwardness; community service as leadership, not wasted time; and cooperation as strength, not weakness.

I want our people to understand that national renewal begins with local renewal.

Let every community become its own republic of purpose: organized, informed, compassionate, productive, demanding, and united. Let it identify its strengths, confront its problems, cultivate its young people, protect its vulnerable, and hold public authorities accountable.

To be rooted is not to be trapped. It is to stand firmly enough that one can grow, create, and even reach outward to the world without losing oneself.

After more than forty years abroad, I know that no achievement completely silences the call of home. My hope is that future generations will not have to live with that same question: What if my country had given me a reason to stay?

Let us build communities that answer it—not with promises, but with purpose, unity, dignity, and opportunity.

“The challenge, therefore, is to change the direction of our perspective. Not to present the countryside as something that has been left behind, but as an area in which new generations can learn, undertake projects and create opportunities. The next step will be to continue shaping the initiative and move towards a structure that will allow it to be consolidated as an association or institution.”

A community without borders

It is a vision in which the experience of some can become an impetus for others, and in which geographical distances lose importance compared to human connections . This encapsulates the essence of “Rooted“:

“That they be able to fly above their own land. It’s not about preventing people from leaving or idealizing permanence. It’s about, according to the vision of its promoter, that staying can also be an option with opportunities, training and a future.” Close your eyes and see New York in Georgetown

 

 

 

Kaneville Must Not Become Another Land Grab by Another Name

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592 GUARDIAN◊ACCOUNTABILITY◊INTEGRITY JOURNALISM FOR GUYANA

 Kaneville Must Not Become Another Land Grab by Another Name

OPINION BY: Hem  Kumar • AUGUST 2026

The eviction notices served on residents of Kaneville, East Bank Demerara, are not merely notices to vacate. They are a test of whether Guyana has one land policy for all citizens—or one policy for the poor and another for the politically protected.

Residents were reportedly given (14) days to remove themselves from land they have occupied, developed and called home. That deadline is now closing in. The public expects what usually follows: State vehicles, heavy equipment, police presence, demolished homes, displaced families and official statements about illegality, order and development.

But Guyanese are entitled to ask the question the authorities would prefer to avoid: Once Kaneville is cleared, who gets the land?

Will it remain for the public purpose now being invoked? Will it be used for roads, drainage, schools, hospitals, housing or other properly disclosed development? Or will the removal of poor families create an opening for persons with the right party ties, business relationships, surnames, telephone numbers and access to decision-makers?

This is not cynicism. It is the product of experience.

For too long, land administration in Guyana has operated under a cloud of public distrust. Ordinary citizens endure long waits, unclear procedures, shifting requirements and unanswered applications. Meanwhile, people perceived to be politically connected appear to obtain access to valuable State lands with a speed and ease that ordinary Guyanese can only envy.

That perception is devastating. It tells the poor man that a formal application is not enough. It tells the young family that hard work is not enough. It tells the unemployed mother that citizenship is not enough. It tells the citizen that the real title deed is not a transport, lease or allocation letter, but a connection.

That is not land policy. That is patronage.

Bulldozers Cannot Be the Policy

Let us be clear: illegal occupation must not be encouraged. Public land is not a free-for-all. Land reserved for roads, drainage, public utilities, schools, hospitals, agriculture, environmental protection and planned housing cannot be casually occupied without consequences.

But law enforcement without justice is not governance. It is simply power.

The State cannot solve a housing crisis by waiting until poor people build homes, establish families, spend years improving a community and then arrive with machinery to erase their lives. If the occupation is unlawful, the State must act. But it must also explain why families were allowed to settle, build and remain for so long; what notice and assistance were provided; whether relocation is available; whether regularization was considered; and whether the land will truly serve the public interest after the evictions.

A family living without title may have no legal right to remain. But that does not mean the State has no duty to act humanely, transparently and consistently.

 

The question is not whether the law applies to Kaneville. It does. The question is whether it applies with equal force to those who obtain land through influence, insider information, preferential treatment or political intervention.

The Public Is Entitled to Answers

Before a single structure is demolished, the responsible agencies should publicly disclose:

◊ The exact legal status and boundaries of the land at Kaneville

◊ The statutory authority under which the evictions are being pursued

◊ The purpose for which the land is required

◊ The full development plan, including timelines and the agency responsible

◊ Whether the land is intended for public infrastructure, housing, commercial development, private leasing or allocation

◊ The names of any current or proposed beneficiaries, developers, lessees or allottees

◊ The method by which any future allocation will be made

◊ The valuation of the land and the basis upon which prices, leases or concessions will be determined

◊ Whether occupants were assessed for regularisation, relocation or alternative housing

◊ The criteria used to decide who receives assistance and who does not

◊ The safeguards against the land being transferred, allocated or occupied by politically favoured persons after residents are removed

There is no valid reason for secrecy. If the exercise is lawful, necessary and in the public interest, transparency can only strengthen it. If transparency is resisted, the public is entitled to ask what exactly is being concealed

No official should be offended by those questions. Public land is held in trust for the people of Guyana. Ministers, agencies and officials do not own it. They administer it. And administration without accountability is merely discretion waiting to be abused.

Squatting, Poverty and Privilege

Guyanese must stop allowing the word “squatter” to shut down every conversation about justice.

Being uprooted after settling for years?

There is a profound difference between an organized scheme to steal or fraudulently transfer land and a poor family occupying land because formal housing is unaffordable, inaccessible or unavailable. Both situations may require legal intervention, but they do not demand the same response, carry the same moral weight or reveal the same failure of the State.

Many informal settlements are not evidence of a people who reject the law. They are evidence of a housing system that has failed to meet human need.

A person who cannot afford a plot, cannot secure a mortgage, cannot navigate the bureaucracy and cannot wait indefinitely for a land allocation will often do what desperate people have always done: find a place to live. That does not create legal ownership. But it does expose the State’s failure to provide an accessible path to lawful ownership.

The poor must not be permitted to capture public lands. But neither should the influential be permitted to capture public lands through boardrooms, back channels, political offices and undisclosed arrangements.

Land theft does not become respectable because the thief wears a suit, owns a company, attends fundraisers or has friends in high office.

One Law Must Govern All

There must not be bulldozers for the weak and accommodation for the well-connected.

There must not be eviction notices for struggling families and quiet land deals for those who can call a Minister, a senior official, a party operative or a powerful business associate.

There must not be public condemnation of informal settlers while choice State lands are allocated, leased, rezoned, regularized or transferred under arrangements the public cannot see and cannot test.

◊ Every State-land allocation should be publicly traceable.

◊ Every beneficiary should be known.

◊ Every valuation should be independently defensible.

◊ Every waiver, concession, lease, regularisation and transfer should be subject to clear written criteria.

◊ Every conflict of interest should be disclosed.

◊ Every credible allegation of favouritizm should be independently investigated.

That is not radical. It is the minimum standard of a functioning democracy. The people of Kaneville are not above the law. But neither are those close to power.

If the State intends to remove them, it must show the public—not merely assert—that the land will be used lawfully, fairly and transparently. It must demonstrate that this is not another cycle in which the vulnerable are removed and the connected later arrive to harvest the opportunity.

Because once that occurs, the eviction is no longer simply an exercise in enforcement.                                                                                                   It becomes State-assisted dispossession.                                                 And no Government that claims to govern for all Guyanese can justify that.

 

When the Audit Began, the Locks Changed

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY JOURNALISM♦ GUYANA

When the Audit Began, the Locks Changed

OPINION BY : Hem Kumar–August 2026

The Guyana Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha is not merely confronting a dispute over a building, a temple, or personalities. It is confronting a far more consequential test: whether a statutory religious body can be restored to accountable governance when the very process of examining its books is allegedly met with obstruction.

That is the question now before the High Court.

Court-appointed managers Geeta Chandan-Edmond and Mahendra Mookram say they were locked out of the Maha Sabha’s management office at Kalyan Mall in July—cut off from administrative records, financial documents, procurement material, and membership information required to carry out the precise duties assigned to them by the court.

 

Let us be clear about what this means.

These were not private individuals wandering into an organization’s affairs. They were appointed by the High Court to manage the Maha Sabha, compile its membership register, bring overdue accounts under audit, and organise elections. If the managers’ affidavit is accepted, the lockout was not a petty internal quarrel. It was an apparent attempt to disable a court-supervised process.

And it came after audit work had begun to expose troubling matters.

General Secretary Sabita Lalu and member of SDMS,attorney Ms. Geeta  Chandon-Edmond

An audit reportedly found that General Secretary and Trustee Mahadai Lalu was indebted to the Maha Sabha in the sum of $1.38 million. The managers further allege that payments totalling $4.47 million were made in 2025 to a security service associated with Lalu while she held office, alongside $572,705 paid to former mayor and applicant Pandit Ubraj Narine.

Pt. Ubraj Narine

Together, the managers say, those payments accounted for more than half of the body’s 2025 expenditure—and were not supported by proper procurement records, contracts, or declarations of conflict.

Those are serious allegations. They are not findings of guilt, and no fair-minded observer should pretend otherwise. But neither should anyone trivialise them. Where a statutory organisation’s funds appear to flow to persons holding influence or office within that organisation, the burden is on those responsible to show that every transaction was authorised, necessary, documented, competitively procured where required, and free from self-dealing.

That is what accountability looks like.

A Test of Governance

The Maha Sabha’s leadership dispute has lasted for years, but age does not convert dysfunction into legitimacy. Nor does religious standing place a statutory body beyond ordinary principles of transparency, financial discipline, and fiduciary responsibility.

In fact, the opposite is true.

A religious institution entrusted with property, money, members’ confidence, and a public statutory identity carries a heightened obligation to conduct its affairs cleanly. Devotees should never be asked to choose between faith and accountability. The two must coexist.

The issue cannot be reduced to whether renovations were approved, whether worship was temporarily relocated, or whether particular personalities are liked or disliked. Those questions may be relevant and must be resolved on evidence. But they cannot eclipse the central matter: What did the audit reveal, where are the records, who approved the spending, and why were court-appointed managers allegedly prevented from accessing the documents needed to answer those questions?

The answer cannot be silence. It cannot be delay. And it certainly cannot be a change of locks.

The Suspicion Around Replacement

The reported effort to remove Chandan-Edmond from the court-appointed management structure deserves close scrutiny, particularly because it surfaced after the audit process reportedly began identifying financial irregularities.

There may be lawful grounds to challenge an interim manager. Parties in litigation have every right to seek relief before the court. But timing matters. Context matters. And public confidence matters.

Any attempt to replace a court-appointed manager while audits are underway must be tested against a simple question: would the change protect the Maha Sabha’s interests, or would it interrupt a process that is becoming uncomfortable for those whose conduct is under examination?

That question is especially important amid reports linking the proposed replacement to WIN Parliamentarian Vishnu Panday. If such a proposal is formally before the court, it must be disclosed plainly in filed documents. If it is not, it must not be circulated as established fact. The Maha Sabha’s members deserve transparency, not political whispers, factional manoeuvres, or trial by WhatsApp.

No one should be installed, removed, protected, or condemned on rumour.

But no one should be permitted to use litigation, religious sentiment, or organizational chaos as a shield against an audit either.

Preserve the Evidence

The High Court should move decisively to protect the integrity of its own order.

All Maha Sabha financial and administrative records—hard-copy files, minute books, receipts, payment vouchers, contracts, cheque stubs, bank statements, electronic files, emails, WhatsApp records, membership data, and procurement records—should be immediately secured and independently inventoried.

There must be no room for uncertainty about what existed before the lockout, what was accessed afterwards, and whether any records have gone missing, been altered, or been withheld.

The audit must proceed without intimidation. Any accountant retained to examine the Maha Sabha’s books should be free to work without harassment, interference, or pressure from any officeholder, trustee, employee, applicant, or faction.

If evidence establishes that money was improperly paid, conflicts were concealed, records were withheld, or court officers were obstructed, recovery and legal consequences must follow. If the allegations are disproved, that too should be established openly and conclusively.

The Maha Sabha cannot be rebuilt on selective outrage.

Faith Requires Clean Hands

For too long, institutions across Guyana have treated audits as threats rather than safeguards. That culture is corrosive. It teaches officeholders that records are personal property, that scrutiny is persecution, and that public or organizational funds can be managed without adequate explanation.

The Maha Sabha now has an opportunity to reject that culture.

Its members should demand audited accounts. They should demand a verified membership register. They should demand elections conducted under credible rules. They should demand that all persons entrusted with the body’s finances disclose conflicts and account fully for every dollar.

Most of all, they should demand that the court’s authority be respected.

The locks may have changed. But the larger question will not disappear: when the audit began, what were certain people so determined to keep behind closed doors?

The 592 Guardian

“Enter the Political Kingdom” by Moses Bhagwan.

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ♦ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM ♦GUYANA

“Enter the Political Kingdom” by Moses Bhagwan. Ian Randle Publishers, 2026. 386 pp.

Book Review by: Christopher Ram

One afternoon in 1957, a young civil servant batting in the nets at the East Indian Cricket Club looked up and found Cheddi Jagan running in to bowl at him. Next morning, on impulse, he telephoned Jagan’s dental clinic on Charlotte Street, was shown into a corner of the surgery, said he admired what Jagan was doing, and was handed a bundle of pamphlets scooped off the floor. He walked out with the Daily Worker, the Soviet Weekly and an old Thunder, and read his way into a life.

What follows is a tell-all in which the teller refuses to cast himself as the hero. That is the most striking feature of this book – and the reason to trust it. A self-styled country boy, Moses Bhagwan, a lawyer by profession and a politician by vocation, spent fifty years in the front line of Guyanese politics, was detained by the British and jailed by Burnham, sat at Lancaster House and in Nkrumah’s office, and helped found the movement that broke a dictatorship.

Yet in over four hundred readable pages he effortlessly avoids shining the spotlight on himself. Even the title is borrowed and the loan declared: Nkrumah’s cry to seek first the political kingdom, which Burnham took up at Bourda Green in 1957, where Bhagwan notes only that he was in the crowd. A kingdom he entered, not one he craved.

The comparison is Tyrone Ferguson’s To Survive Sensibly, or to Court Heroic Death (1999), still the indispensable account of how Guyana’s political economy was managed between 1965 and 1985, and a book that never had the readership it earned. Ferguson’s account is of two decades behind a desk, formulating policy.

Bhagwan spent five decades wrapped in politics, and gives us his from the platform, the picket line and the lock-up. Together they cover a period much of the country now knows only as rumour.

He was the last of six children of a Presbyterian catechist and a plantation labourer.  The frankness appears early. He described his placement at Berbice High School as undeserved, but equally comfortable with comic books and with those by Hugo, Dickens and the Brontës. He judges himself a failure as a teacher. He was more than an occasional drinker and recalls a weekend back at the dormitory that had housed him and smashed two chairs, an ingratitude he considers inexcusable.

Banished to a school up the Mahaicony Creek, he sat alone one evening watching the lights on the water and asked himself what he was doing to himself. The same page gives the lie to his modesty: ignored for two months after applying to the civil service, he wrote to the Chief Secretary accusing it of discriminating against country people, and was called for interview a fortnight later. A man building a legend would have made that letter a set piece.

His political ascent was fast – Comrade X in the party paper, chairman of the Progressive Youth Organisation, MP for the Essequibo Islands at age twenty-six, Chief Whip, and a seat in Jagan’s inner circle. And here he does what almost nobody does.

The slogan that consecrated Jagan as Son of Guyana, Teacher of the People, Father of the Nation – founding text of a personality cult that outlived its subject – was his, written to shore up the leader when the party looked unsteady, and he sets it down and accepts responsibility. The same instinct preserves the embarrassing moments most memoirists lose – the budget speech with the plainly wrong calculation, the schoolchildren giggling in the gallery.

The break came over independence of mind. Detained without charge at Mazaruni in June 1964 – soldiers on his stairs before daybreak, a helicopter off a cricket field – he and the PYO leadership spent five months drafting the Mazaruni Papers, arguing for a Guyanese road to socialism distinct from the Soviet model. He wrote poetry there too, a Creolese piece about a cane cutter walking home short-weighted that won a prize fifty-five years later.

A year on, speaking in Ghana, he named race as central to Guyanese politics, and the repudiation reached him by cable before he returned home. His own diagnosis is the coolest sentence in the book: he had cast doubt on the party’s reliability to Moscow, and that was fatal.  Banished and disowned.  He recounts that his erstwhile hero Cheddi Jagan refused to share a platform with him, and only relented on the insistence of ASCRIA, a pro-black organisation.

That did not prevent Bhagwan attending Jagan’s cremation and shedding a tear.

He never held public office again; indeed, he refused it. He had been expelled for the very thing to which he would then dedicate the better part of his life, and it became his mission. It began in a corridor at Lancaster House in 1962, where without clearing it with his own delegation he approached the opposing camp to float a PPP-PNC coalition. It travelled with him on the Ghanaian mission of 1964; into IPRA, the Indian Political Revolutionary Associates through which he convened a joint race commission with its African counterpart, ASCRIA, and carried it to bottom houses in the East Coast villages; and into the Working People’s Alliance.

At eighty-nine he is still proposing it and still arguing it properly – from Arthur Lewis on the immorality of winner-take-all and Tocqueville on the tyranny of the majority to a constitutional threshold requiring two-thirds of Parliament to form a government.

Sixty-four years, one idea, and a mind still working.

Burnham tried repeatedly to buy him – the speakership dangled, audiences granted in a study where the visitor’s chair had been set conspicuously low. Refusing Burnham was itself an act of bravery. Bhagwan took nothing, and spent nineteen days in Camp Street rather than pay a fine over an opposition newsletter.

He had by then become one of the better lawyers of his generation, having earned his place at the table with the likes of Miles Fitzpatrick, Peter Britton, Doodnauth Singh and Benjamin Gibson, though the book will not say so. His account of thirty years at the bar is titled “Law and Politics” and the title is exact: treason, sedition, arson, capital murder, the activists for whom he was permanently on house call. His own practice gets one paragraph at the very end. The instinct was the public defender’s from the start – his first appearance in the Full Court was an appeal for a rice farmer from Mora Point who had once taught him to plough a field at night, and he won it.

The establishment noticed his politics, not his professional competence: his application for silk was never even acknowledged.

Somebody paid for this, and Bhagwan honours his late wife Samia as one of its victims. She watched soldiers take him, scaled a fence with two small boys when troops surrounded the house, and was the sole earner during his London law years. That a political autobiography ends on the tribute to Samia says as much about her as about the author.

It also explains the four forewords: because the author will not characterise himself, others had to. Vanda Radzik reads the book as a book, tracking its shifts from lyrical country passages to thriller pace to analytical legal prose. Nigel Westmaas supplies the man the pages omit – the office where comrades came for politics and a free meal, the joke that his Mass Activities Unit was the Menshevik department to their Bolshevik one, Bhagwan calm at the wheel of the WPA tapir as thugs set upon it.

What Bhagwan leaves is a legacy already being lost. Set the outspoken Bar Association of his day against the culture of habitual obedience Burnham bred – obedience not to the law but to its enforcers. Students who will not speak, public servants who will not sign, lawyers gone quiet or gone after the money. The dictatorship we thought was bad is gone; the habit has outlived it, and the courage that broke it was never handed down.

That loss is not Bhagwan’s. He files no complaint, and offers a programme rather than a lament.

Bhagwan now lives in New York, where for years he drove a school bus with Samia beside him as counsellor; she knew every route on the island. A man who once sat across a desk from Nkrumah, delivering children to school in Queens, and reporting it in the same level voice he uses for everything else. The country he left is rich now and still governed by the elections arithmetic he spent his life trying to break. His proposal has been on the table since 1965, and this book – precisely because its author never asks to be admired – is the most persuasive case anyone has made for it.

 Available on Amazon – just click the link below :

https://a.co/d/0dM2Bkcd

 The reviewer has known Moses Bhagwan for many decades.

“Enter the Political Kingdom” by Moses Bhagwan. Ian Randle Publishers, 2026. 386 pp.

Book Review by Christopher Ram

 

    

 

 

CHANGE OF VENUE & SOLIDARITY with MV BARIMA VICTIMS and SURVIVORS

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ♦ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM ♦GUYANA

PRESS RELEASE

“Enter the Political Kingdom” Book Launch

Saturday August 8th at 5.00 PM at the Georgetown Club

CHANGE OF VENUE & SOLIDARITY with MV BARIMA VICTIMS and SURVIVORS

 

 

“Enter the Political Kingdom”, the panoramic autobiography of Moses Bhagwan, spanning the unified Guyanese colonial struggle, the post-colonial era and its divisive politics as well as the Civil Rebellion inspired by the Working Peoples Alliance and Walter Rodney is veined with memorable insights into community life and social activism and the core values and priorities dedicated to family life, which spans some seventy years of a life well lived. 

The book will be launched on Saturday, August 8th at 5.00 PM before an assembly of Guyanese. (Please note that the venue is now the Georgetown Club, 230 Camp Street (Between Middle and New Market). The venue has changed from the Umana Yana because it has been assigned by the Ministry of Culture as the MV Barima Information Centre for affected families.

The book launch takes place at a time of a devastated nation in mourning for the loss of lives and the trauma and suffering of survivors and the impact upon the lives of families related to the victims, of the MV Barima tragedy, a horror affecting Guyanese lives – never before experienced in the modern history of our country.

In this context, the organizers of this event have considered it fit and humane to dedicate the event to all those in mourning and in grief, in particular to the memory of the lost lives and those as yet unrecovered which magnifies the grief of the families impacted by this tragedy.

Having read the book it is our conviction that its publication now is timely as within its pages many episodes relate and confirm the genius, resourcefulness  and fortitude of the people of Guyana to battle against adversities  and to hold hands and hearts in unity in times of tragedy like  this one – as we witness joint actions, heroic rescues and unified calls for concerted action across all groups and organizations of civil society and social and political leaders.

We take this opportunity to commend all efforts to locate the sources and causes of this  catastrophe, as well as initiatives taken to sustain the families impacted. We call upon all Guyanese to continue to exercise intense vigilance as the process of unearthing the facts as they unfold so as to ensure that no stone is left unturned or effort spared in order to recover all the missing and dead, and to determine the truth of the causes of this tragedy in an honest, collective, transparent and accountable manner.

Our Book Launch program has allotted time for expressing sympathy, support and solidarity with all victims and all mourners and prayers of comfort will be offered.

The Author and Editors of “Enter the Political Kingdom” join in issuing this Press Release.

Vanda Radzik, Christopher Ram, Wazir Mohamed (Organizers of the Book Launch)

Alissa Trotz, Sasha Ann Panaram, Nigel Westmaas (Editors)

Moses Bhagwan (Author)

Georgetown August 1st 2026

 

  

 

Guests, Not Gods: The Pulpit’s Duty When Power Walks In

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THE 592 GUARDIAN

EDITORIAL

Guests, Not Gods: The Pulpit’s Duty When Power Walks In

On the moral cowardice of houses of worship that trade the altar for access — and go silent when the powerful owe the nation an answer

Every sacred place in Guyana must welcome every soul that enters it — dharmic, Islamic, ecclesiastic, Christian, atheist, agnostic, and yes, politician. No one is irredeemable, and no threshold of a temple, mandir, mosque, or church should ever be barred to the vilest trickster who walks through it seeking grace. That is not in dispute, and this news outlet does not dispute it. But there is a canyon of difference between welcoming a politician and crowning him. Between offering a seat and surrendering the pulpit. Between letting a man pray, and letting him perform.

Politicians who enter a sacred space come as guests. They take their place as guests. They pray as guests, if they are up to it. That is the entirety of their entitlement, and it is a generous one. No honest man or woman of faith needs a political operator co-opting his most public moment with God — needs him processed to the front, handed the microphone, permitted to turn worship into stagecraft. 

When a man of manufactured piety proselytises from the altar, that is not communion. That is perversion of the sanctuary, dressed in the borrowed vestments of the sacred.

And yet, across Guyana’s houses of worship, we have watched a different arrangement take hold: preachers who jump and gyrate for whichever politician has grinding, gyrating power over the poor. Ministers who bow before manmade gods dressed as public servants. Men and women who preen behind the cloth while a self-made deity preens beside them at the pulpit rail. 

Which preacher of true moral substance consents to such a display? Which one is so low as to stoop lower still, for a reward, a recognition, an elevation? None who deserve the collar.

That, this publication has already said, immovably and non-negotiably. But there is a second corruption, quieter than the first and just as grave: the silence of the sanctuary when the politician it just finished garlanding owes the country an answer he has not given. We are not accusing the President of misleading the nation. 

We are asking, as any citizen of a republic is entitled to ask, to see the documents. That is the whole of the demand — production, not presumption of guilt. It is the most modest request accountability journalism can make of executive power, and it is the one so many of Guyana’s well-endowed houses of moral instruction have found no cause to echo. Not one word. Not from the pulpits that had a president in their midst weeks earlier, hands raised, blessed and blessing. The same institutions that would summon righteous fury over a private citizen’s minor indiscretion have found, in the face of an unresolved public question involving the nation’s highest office, nothing to say at all.

That silence is not neutrality. Neutrality does not require gyrating to a politician’s music one Sunday and forgetting his name the next, when accountability comes calling. 

This is something else — a free pass extended in advance, purchased with proximity, paid for in access to the microphone, the front pew, the photograph shaking hands beside the altar. 

An insane proliferation of politics and religion has entrenched itself in Guyana, and the morally righteous have proven only too accommodating with the accolades.                            

They have overlooked, conveniently and at length, the untenable position a sitting president has put himself into.

Guyana is a land now blessed with wealth it did not have a decade ago, and still crippled, perpetually, by the burdens of poverty for so many who live in it. That contradiction is precisely the terrain on which the prophetic voice of religion is supposed to stand — grinding gyrating politicians who grind the poor to dust are exactly who the pulpit exists to confront, not court. 

A preacher who will not ask a basic question of the powerful because the powerful filled his stadium last month has already answered, in practice, whose gospel he actually preaches.

Politicians have their place. They must either know it, or be put to it. Welcome, brother — take a seat. Listen and learn about humility, about sincerity, about banishing hypocrisy, about the plight of the poor and how much they hurt in a land so rich. But do not hand him the pulpit. And when he leaves the sanctuary and re-enters public life owing the public an answer, do not pretend the two are unconnected.

Ask for the documents. That is not persecution. That is the last honest thing left for a house of God to do.

— The Board

Eating Well, Aging Better: Nourishing the Body for Lifelong Vitality

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BY: Staff— Writer

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣.

Aging is inevitable, but how we age is deeply influenced by how we nourish our bodies. It is a privilege many overlook. When healthy habits are neglected and nutrition is unbalanced, our metabolic age can outpace our actual years, showing up in reduced energy, weaker bones, dull skin, and declining mental clarity.

For women especially, the connection between diet and wellbeing is undeniable. The foods we consume play a critical role in maintaining vitality, supporting hormonal balance, and preserving skin elasticity. Central to this is managing inflammation, a key driver of accelerated ageing. Diets rich in antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds can help slow this process and promote graceful aging.

Foods That Support Healthy Aging

A vibrant, balanced diet begins with a variety of fruits and vegetables. Colourful produce is packed with antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals that combat oxidative stress, one of the leading causes of premature ageing. Locally available options such as pawpaw, West Indian cherries, pommerac, oranges, portugal, sweet peppers, and tomatoes are especially beneficial. Vitamin C-rich foods are particularly important, as they support collagen production, helping to maintain firm, youthful skin.

Hydration is another cornerstone of healthy ageing. The skin is largely composed of water, and dehydration can accelerate visible signs of ageing. Incorporating hydrating foods such as watermelon, pineapple, cucumber, lettuce, and mango can help maintain skin health from within. Soups, herbal teas, and nutrient-rich smoothies also contribute to hydration while delivering antioxidants that support overall wellness.

Whole grains and fibre are equally essential. Dietary fibre supports digestion, stabilises blood sugar, and plays a role in hormonal balance. It also contributes to gut health, which is increasingly linked to immune function and skin clarity. Simple additions such as oats, whole wheat flour, and fibre-rich snacks can make a meaningful difference in daily nutrition.

Foods to Limit for Better Aging

While nourishing foods support longevity, certain dietary habits can accelerate ageing when consumed excessively. These include high sugar intake, ultra-processed foods, excessive alcohol, fried foods, and high-salt diets. Moderation is key, as these foods can contribute to inflammation, metabolic imbalance, and long-term health complications.

A Lifestyle, Not a Quick Fix

Healthy ageing is not about chasing perfection or resisting time. It is about intentional living. Women who prioritise balanced nutrition, reduce processed foods, manage stress, and commit to consistent wellness practices often experience greater strength, confidence, and vitality at every stage of life.

Eating well is not just about adding years to life, but life to years.

Culture Central to Nation-Building as Guyana Marks 60 Years of Independence — President Ali

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BY: Staff— Writer

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣.          

President Dr Irfaan Ali has underscored the critical role of culture in shaping Guyana’s future, calling on citizens to embrace unity and diversity as the nation prepares to celebrate its 60th Independence Anniversary.

Delivering the feature address at the opening of Guyana Festival 2026 at the National Stadium, Providence, the Head of State described culture as a foundational pillar of national development rather than a peripheral element.
“Culture is not a side attraction of nation-building; it is part of the main story,” President Ali declared. “It gives a society its shared identity, values and sense of belonging.”
Held under the theme “Sound, Soul and Taste,” the festival returns after a 12-year hiatus and forms a key component of the country’s diamond jubilee celebrations.

Unity Through Culture
Reflecting on Guyana’s post-independence journey since 1966, President Ali acknowledged past challenges while urging a renewed commitment to unity, inclusion, and shared national purpose.

“The 60th anniversary of Guyana’s independence is a time for recommitment — to unity, to inclusion, and to the idea of One Guyana, not as a slogan, but as a lived reality,” he said.
He emphasised that Guyana’s rich multicultural heritage — shaped by African, Indian, Indigenous, European, Chinese and Portuguese influences — must serve as a bridge to strengthen cohesion rather than deepen division.
“No nation can progress when its people are divided against themselves,” the President asserted.

Call to Youth
In a direct appeal to young Guyanese, President Ali urged them to reject inherited divisions and take responsibility for building a more unified society.

“You are not responsible for the divisions of the past, but you are responsible for the unity of the future,” he said. “Become the generation that makes One Guyana real in our schools, workplaces and communities.”
He added that the country’s diversity should be viewed as a strategic strength: “You are the generation that can turn diversity into destiny.”

Linking Unity and Development
The President also warned that economic growth without social cohesion could exacerbate inequality and division if not managed inclusively.
“When development is inclusive, unity becomes natural. When development is exclusive, division becomes inevitable,” he said, reaffirming his administration’s commitment to equitable development.


Festival Signals Cultural and Tourism Ambitions
Minister of Tourism, Industry and Commerce, Susan Rodrigues, described the festival’s return as both historic and strategic, positioning it as a key platform to showcase Guyana’s cultural richness to the world.
“Tonight, we open more than a festival. We celebrate identity, heritage, achievement and possibility,” she said.

Rodrigues noted that the initiative aligns with Guyana’s broader push to expand its tourism sector, particularly as global travellers increasingly seek authentic, experience-driven destinations.
“Visitors want connection and immersive experiences — and Guyana has something unique to offer,” she said.

She added that the festival supports local entrepreneurs, artisans and performers, while helping to preserve cultural identity amid rapid national development.
“This is a national statement that Guyana is proud of its people, its culture and its identity,” Rodrigues emphasised.

Celebrating ‘Sound, Soul and Taste’
Over three days, the Guyana Festival will feature cultural villages, culinary exhibitions, performances, storytelling, craft displays and competitions, highlighting the country’s traditions, history and creative talent.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣-𝙏𝙧𝙪𝙩𝙝 , 𝘼𝙘𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮, 𝙄𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙜𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙄𝙣 𝙂𝙪𝙮𝙖𝙣𝙖 𝘼𝙣𝙙 𝘾𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙗𝙗𝙚𝙖𝙣 𝙋𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙨.— ✦—

“𝐆𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐂𝐚𝐬𝐮𝐬 𝐁𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢: 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐅𝐢𝐥𝐭𝐡 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐈𝐬 𝐁𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐔𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐔𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐥”

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Something has changed on our streets: the garbage is no longer just a nuisance—it’s everywhere, thick, inescapable, and suddenly impossible to ignore. It’s not just that people are a little sloppier; it’s as if the city has been designed to look like a dump. This feels less like neglect and more like a deliberate, orchestrated spectacle.
Read it through the lens of Forbes Burnham’s thinking, and this is what he would call a casus belli: a manufactured provocation, carefully framed to justify a bigger political move. The PPP‑led government allows enforcement to slacken, lets contractors and public agencies operate with impunity, and then lets the streets speak for them. The image of a filthy, “broken” city becomes the visual proof that the City Council is “dysfunctional” and therefore unfit to govern.
The real purpose is obvious: to build a narrative that only the central government can “fix” the city—by taking control, stripping away autonomy, and expanding its own power. The garbage is not an accident or a coincidence; it is a political weapon, a slow‑burn provocation meant to erode public confidence in local leadership.
When the streets are this visibly abused, the call for a “strong hand” from above starts to sound reasonable, even noble.
So when you see that pile of trash deliberately left at the corner, or those bags rotting on the sidewalk, don’t just see laziness—see a casus belli in progress: a carefully staged crisis to justify a power grab over the City Council.

Canadian Firm Moves to Develop Uranium Project Long Whispered About in Guyana

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For decades, there have been quiet acknowledgments—often denied, downplayed, or ignored—that Guyana sits atop uranium deposits. Today, those suspicions are no longer buried.
Canadian company U92 Energy Corp. has now formally advanced plans for a uranium project in Region Seven, effectively confirming what many in technical and mining circles have known but rarely stated openly: Guyana possesses commercially viable uranium resources.
The company disclosed that its Kurupung project spans approximately 92 square kilometres and is tied to a historical estimate of 20.6 million pounds of uranium. While U92 cautions that these figures are not yet compliant with current reporting standards, the scale is enough to place Guyana on the map of emerging uranium jurisdictions.
In its investor updates, U92 openly describes Guyana as a “mining-friendly” territory supported by a pro-mining government—language that signals confidence not just in the geology, but in the political environment surrounding extractive industries.
That openness marks a stark contrast to years of near silence around uranium. Unlike gold, bauxite, or now oil, uranium has remained a sensitive subject globally due to its strategic and security implications. Yet, with nuclear energy gaining renewed traction as part of the global clean energy transition, that silence is rapidly eroding.
The company is preparing to commence a 5,000-metre diamond drilling programme, with equipment already in-country and site preparations underway. Its goal is to update and expand the existing resource estimate by the second half of 2026.
Behind the scenes, technical teams are revisiting more than 129,000 metres of historical drilling data—further evidence that uranium exploration in Guyana is not new, but rather an old reality now stepping into public view.
What was once cautiously avoided in national discourse is now being positioned as an economic opportunity. The question going forward is not whether uranium exists in Guyana, but how transparently—and responsibly—its development will be managed.
𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣-𝙏𝙧𝙪𝙩𝙝 , 𝘼𝙘𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮,𝙄𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙜𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙄𝙣𝙂𝙪𝙮𝙖𝙣𝙖 𝘼𝙣𝙙 𝘾𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙗𝙗𝙚𝙖𝙣 𝙋𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙨.— ✦