AN INQUIRY INTO ITSELF

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ◊ ACCOUNTABILITY · GOVERNANCE · THE PUBLIC RECORD

 AN INQUIRY INTO ITSELF

Why a Presidentially-Appointed Commission Cannot Investigate. The Government that Appoints It — and What Must Change Before any appointments.  

Seventy-three people are confirmed dead. Thirty remain unaccounted for. Seventy-six survived. On the night of July 18, the MV Barima — an 87-year-old vessel operated by the state’s own Transport and Harbours Department — capsized off Iron Pun in the Pomeroon River en route to Port Kaituma, carrying, by the government’s own revised count following a review of departure-stelling CCTV footage, 179 people, a figure that itself diverged from the official passenger manifest. It is already being described, without serious dispute, as the deadliest maritime disaster in Guyana’s modern history.

President Dr Irfaan Ali has now committed to naming, on July 26, a five-member Commission of Inquiry. He will select its members. He will set its Terms of Reference. He will determine, by extension, what the Commission is permitted to look at, whom it is permitted to summon, and what happens to its findings once they are filed. This media sets out why that structure is a conflict of interest as a matter of basic institutional design — not an accusation of bad faith against any named individual — and what specific, verifiable safeguards must appear in the published Terms of Reference before this Commission can be called independent in substance rather than in name

1.. THE STRUCTURAL PROBLEM

A Commission of Inquiry in Guyana is an executive instrument. It is created, staffed, and scoped by the President, and in the ordinary course of things its findings are published — or not — at the government’s discretion, and acted upon — or not — by the same government whose ministries and state entities sit within its potential findings of fault. This is not a partisan characterization; it is the plain operation of the Commissions of Inquiry framework as it currently exists.

The entities whose conduct falls squarely within the scope President Ali himself announced — vessel loading, passenger boarding procedures, seaworthiness, maintenance history, compliance with maritime law, crew competence, and the passenger-manifest discrepancy already confirmed by government review — are not private actors. The MV Barima was owned and operated by the Transport and Harbours Department, a state entity. Its regulatory overseer is the Maritime Administration Department, a state entity. The ministries with policy responsibility — Public Works under Minister Juan Edghill, and Public Utilities and Aviation under Minister Deodat Indar — are Cabinet appointees of the same President who will select the Commission’s members and write its mandate.

The appointing authority and the subjects of the inquiry occupy the same executive branch. That is the conflict — not an allegation, a fact of institutional architecture.

International commissioners do not, by themselves, cure this. Expertise in maritime law or disaster investigation says nothing about who controls their mandate, their subpoena power, their access to Cabinet-level witnesses, or the fate of their report once it is filed. A foreign engineer sitting on a panel whose Terms of Reference were drafted by the government under investigation is still working inside a mandate that government wrote

II.FOUR LEVERS OF CONTROL

Four specific points of control determine whether this Commission functions as genuine accountability or as a managed exercise in the appearance of it. Each remains, as of this writing, entirely at the President’s discretion.

  • Terms of Reference. Whoever drafts the ToR decides what is investigated. A mandate that examines ‘operational factors’ without naming ministerial oversight, procurement decisions, or MARAD’s regulatory performance can produce a thorough-looking report that never reaches the political exposure. As of July 25, the government has not published a ToR. Opposition MP Dr Terrence Campbell has submitted a competing draft to the Speaker seeking to have Parliament — not the President alone — debate and shape it.
  • Appointment and removal. Commissioners serve at the President’s pleasure for appointment, and in the ordinary CoI framework, for removal. Independence of judgment does not eliminate awareness of who conferred the appointment.
  • Compulsion power. Whether the Commission can subpoena ministers, compel MARAD and Transport and Harbours Department records, and refer findings of criminal negligence or misconduct to the Director of Public Prosecutions is not automatic — it must be written into the ToR the President sets. Nothing announced to date guarantees this.
  • Publication and implementation. Neither the release of the Commission’s report nor the implementation of its recommendations is self-executing. Both remain at the discretion of the government the report may implicate.

III. WHAT IS ALREADY IN DISPUTE

This is not a hypothetical concern raised in the abstract. It is the live subject of political conflict in Guyana in the days before the panel is named.

Transparency International Guyana Inc. has called for the domestic Commission to be replaced altogether by an investigation led by the International Maritime Organization and staffed by global maritime experts with no institutional stake in the outcome — and has demanded, as a minimum threshold of the President’s own stated commitment to transparency, the immediate recusal of Minister Edghill, Minister Indar, and MARAD’s senior management from any role in the inquiry’s design or operation.

Opposition parliamentarian Amanza Walton-Desir has demanded the government publish the Terms of Reference, panel membership, and legal basis for the Commission before it proceeds, noting none had been made public as of her statement. Dr Terrence Campbell has submitted a motion to adjourn the National Assembly specifically to debate the ToR, proposing the Commission be empowered to summon witnesses, compel documents, and refer evidence of negligence, misconduct, or corruption for prosecution or disciplinary action — powers that are not guaranteed under the government’s own framing. Opposition figures including Sarabo Haley have publicly questioned whether the government’s proposed Commission will be sufficiently independent at all. Christopher Ram has separately urged that the Commission be established under the specific statutory authority of the Guyana Shipping Act, 1998, rather than as a discretionary executive order, and be allowed to work entirely free of interference.

If President Ali is sincere about the transparency and accountability he has personally promised the families of the deceased, this is the minimum test of that sincerity — not a discretionary courtesy to ministers he appointed.”

— Transparency International Guyana Inc

IV .WHAT THE TERMS OF REFERENCE MUST CONTAIN

Before the Commission is named on July 26, and before its Terms of Reference are finalized, The 592 Guardian sets out the specific, verifiable safeguards that distinguish a genuine inquiry from a managed one. Anything less should be understood by the public, the families of the seventy-three dead, and Guyana’s international partners as a failure to meet the standard President Ali has himself already promised.

  • Publish the full Terms of Reference before the Commission begins work, not after — including explicit, named scope over MARAD’s regulatory conduct, the Transport and Harbours Department’s operational conduct, and ministerial oversight by Minister Edghill and Minister Indar.
  • Bind the Commission with statutory subpoena power to compel testimony from sitting ministers and the production of MARAD and T&HD records, including all documentation bearing on the confirmed passenger-manifest discrepancy.
  • Secure the recusal of Minister Edghill, Minister Indar, and MARAD’s senior management from any role in shaping the Commission’s mandate, procedure, or resourcing.
  • Guarantee unconditional publication of the Commission’s final report in full, on a fixed statutory timeline, with no ministerial or Cabinet power of redaction or delay.
  • Establish a binding mechanism — parliamentary or judicial — for referring findings of negligence, misconduct, or institutional failure to the Director of Public Prosecutions, independent of executive discretion.
  • Resolve, transparently and in public, the competing proposal that primary investigative jurisdiction sit with the International Maritime Organization rather than a domestic executive instrument — a question the government has not yet    answered                                                                • None  of this is an accusation that the five individuals named tomorrow will act in bad faith. It is a statement of institutional fact: a commission’s independence is a function of its mandate, not the biographies of its members. A distinguished panel operating inside a narrow, government-drafted ToR, without subpoena power over ministers, without a binding publication guarantee, is not independent — it is credentialed.

Guyana has been here before. The families gathered at Charity, at the Operations Centre, waiting for word of the missing, are owed more than a well-staffed committee. They are owed an inquiry structurally incapable of protecting the government that appointed it. That is the test the Terms of Reference — not the five names — will actually decide. The 592 Guardian will publish and assess the Terms of Reference in full the moment they are made public.

— The Board, The 592 Guardian

The Commission Is Qualified. The Process Is Not Explained.

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THE 592 GUARDIAN♦ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM · GEORGETOWN, GUYANA

 The Commission Is Qualified. The Process Is Not Explained.

President Ali names five credible experts to the MV Barima inquiry — and answers none of the questions his method has raised

By the Editorial Board

There is no serious case to be made against the competence of the five people President Irfaan Ali named on Sunday to the Commission of Inquiry into the capsizing of the MV Barima. On paper, this is as strong a panel as Guyana could plausibly assemble on short notice from within the Caribbean’s own bench of maritime and legal expertise. The problem is not who they are. It is that no one — not the President, not the Department of Public Information, not any minister — has said how they got there.

THE CREDENTIALS ARE NOT IN DISPUTE

Justice Godfrey Phillip Smith SC, the Commission’s chair, is a former Attorney General and Foreign Minister of Belize who went on to sit as a High Court judge and an acting Justice of Appeal of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court. He has appeared before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the Caribbean Court of Justice, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and currently serves as CARICOM’s High-Level Representative for Law and Criminal Justice — a position to which regional Heads of Government, not Georgetown, appointed him. Colleagues across the Eastern Caribbean bar have described his judgments as fast, rigorous, and difficult to challenge on appeal.

Dr Andrzej Jasionowski brings the technical core the inquiry will need. A Polish naval architect and marine engineer with a doctorate in damaged-vessel hydrodynamics from the University of Strathclyde, he has spent three decades building the forensic tools — flooding simulation, capsize-time modelling, structural failure analysis — that maritime accident investigators rely on internationally.

Captain Hamada Fouda is a working Senior Maritime Surveyor and Compliance Auditor with the Maritime Authority of Jamaica, giving the Commission a regulator’s eye on vessel condition, certification, and compliance history — precisely the terrain the MV Barima’s maintenance record will require.

Nyree Dawn Alfonso, an Attorney-at-Law in Trinidad and Tobago with a stated specialisation in Admiralty and Maritime Law, has litigated shipping and port-authority matters before that country’s Court of Appeal. Maritime law is a narrow bar; her inclusion is not decorative.

Rear Admiral (Ret’d) Hayden Pritchard served as Chief of Defence Staff of Trinidad and Tobago and was the first officer of that country’s Defence Force to hold flag rank, with thirty-three years in uniform spanning naval operations and security.

None of this is filler biography. It is the strongest possible answer to anyone tempted to dismiss the Commission on grounds of competence. This news media will not make that argument, because the record does not support it.

WHAT THE PRESIDENT HAS NOT SAID

Competence, however, is a different question from process — and it is on process that the President’s Sunday announcement said nothing at all.

Guyanese were told, in a video statement to Facebook, that these five “have been carefully selected for their independence, technical expertise, and proven ability.” They were not told who did the selecting, on what criteria, following what search, or with whose advice. No terms of appointment have been published. No enabling legal instrument exists yet — the President himself said on Sunday that “the necessary legal instruments required to give effect to this decision are currently being formalised.

 Five names were announced to a nation in mourning before the legal document constituting the body that will investigate its worst peacetime disaster had even been drafted.

Five names were announced before the document creating the Commission had even been drafted.

This is not a small omission. A Commission of Inquiry derives its authority, and its credibility, from the instrument that creates it and the transparency of the process that populates it.

Guyana has, within the past week, watched a broad and unusual coalition — APNU, WIN, the Forward Guyana Movement, the Alliance For Change, the Vigilant Political Action Committee, and the Guyana Human Rights Association — converge on a single demand: that the composition of this Commission not be decided by the executive alone, and that whatever process was used be transparent enough to survive scrutiny.

The President’s answer to that demand, so far, has been to proceed regardless and offer no account of the process afterward.

THE QUESTIONS THAT REMAIN OPEN

This new outlet is raising the following questions directly to the Office of the President, the Ministry of Legal Affairs, and the Department of Public Information, and will publish their answers in full when received:

  1. Who identified these five individuals? Was a shortlist prepared, and if so, by whom — a ministry, an external search, personal recommendation, or a regional body such as CARICOM?
  2. Were any of the five approached or consulted before Sunday’s announcement, and if so, when did those conversations begin? The timeline matters: was this a decision made in the days after the tragedy, or one that had been under consideration on a longer horizon?
  3. Was any facilitator, search firm, or intermediary organisation involved in identifying or vetting candidates, and if so, who commissioned that work and what did it cost the public purse?
  4. What vetting was conducted for conflicts of interest — financial, professional, or personal — between any Commissioner and any party whose conduct the Commission may examine, including the Ministry of Public Works, the Ministry of Public Utilities and Aviation, the Maritime Administration Department, and any private contractor connected to the MV Barima’s construction, refit, or the March 2026 rehabilitation tender?
  5. Why was the parliamentary opposition not consulted, given that the Leader of the Opposition has publicly confirmed he was not, and given that the National Assembly was scheduled to debate opposition motions on the same matter the following day?
  6. When will the legal instrument establishing the Commission be published, and will it include the selection process, the terms of reference in full, and the Commission’s funding and reporting arrangements?

None of these questions casts doubt on Justice Smith, Dr Jasionowski, Captain Fouda, Ms Alfonso, or Rear Admiral Pritchard. They cast doubt on a government that has, once again, treated the manner of its own decision-making as beneath explanation — even when the subject is the deadliest peacetime disaster in the country’s history, and even when the demand for transparency came not from a single opposition voice but from across the political spectrum and civil society alike.

Guyanese families are owed a Commission whose findings they can trust. That trust is built twice — once in the quality of the people asked to do the work, and once in the visible integrity of how they were chosen.

The President has, this week, answered only the first half of that obligation. This publication will keep asking about the second until he answers it too.

— The Board

When a Nation Normalizes Inhumanity

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ◊ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM ◊ GUYANA

 When a Nation Normalizes Inhumanity.

Being an upstanding ,law abiding citizen  in this country is not a easy task.   A multitude of shortcomings, misgivings—-lack of empathy and compassion, makes it  a constant assault on the conscience. You see cruelty to animals, violence against children and women, brutality, partiality amongst citizens, and then you watch a political and judicial culture that rewards silence, obedience, and convenience. Too many people have learned that the safest way to “get things done” is to align with whoever holds power, no matter how rotten the arrangement may be. 

That is not pragmatism. It is moral surrender.

What makes it worse is that many of the same people who benefit from this system insist on calling it progress. We are told to be grateful for the basics — roads, water, electricity, schools, hospitals — as though these are gifts from rulers rather than the minimum duties of a state. But these are not privileges to be dispensed like charity. These are rights. And every time a government treats them like favors, it reveals how little respect it has for the people it claims to serve.

 A culture of impunity

One of the greatest dangers facing Guyana is not simply corruption in the abstract. It is the normalization of corruption as a way of life. When people begin to believe that influence matters more than law, that connections matter more than merit, and that political loyalty matters more than public duty, the republic starts to rot from within.

This is how abuse becomes ordinary and normalized. This is how public office becomes a private feeding trough. This is how citizens are conditioned to accept mediocrity, delay, and deception as the price of living under a government that says it is building a better future. And this is why so many people turn a blind eye when they are handed a small “tap up” or a temporary favor. They may know the system is broken, but they have been taught to survive inside the breakage instead of demanding repair.

The real tragedy is that this logic has seeped into every level of social life. It is seen in the quiet tolerance of abuse, the indifference to the suffering of the vulnerable, and the refusal to challenge power unless one’s own interest is directly threatened. A society cannot remain healthy when its moral compass is permanently bent toward survival at any cost.

Elite comfort, public suffering

The contrast between rulers and the ruled is often obscene.The people sweat in traffic while officials glide past in convoys with sirens. The people sit through blackouts while state functionaries enjoy generators and full air conditioning. The people are urged to conserve electricity while the offices of power remain cool, comfortable, and fully insulated from the hardship being imposed on everyone else.

We are also told that healthcare and education are improving, yet the evidence of confidence is revealing: those making the claims often do not rely on the same systems they praise. Their children are not the ones waiting in overcrowded wards or under-resourced classrooms. Their families are not the ones praying that public services will work well enough to save a life. Their private safety nets are robust precisely because the public ones are not.

This is why token projects are not enough. A handful of visible works, ribbon-cuttings, and publicity campaigns cannot erase the larger reality of failed governance. A clean road here, a renovated school there, or a gleaming building in the capital does not absolve a state that remains indifferent to the daily humiliation of ordinary people. Citizens should not have to kneel in gratitude for what the state is already obligated to provide.

The human cost

Behind every act of corruption is a person who pays the price. Sometimes that price is medical treatment delayed until it is too late. Sometimes it is justice denied because the poor cannot afford lawyers, connections, or endless court battles. Sometimes it is a child exposed to abuse because institutions meant to protect the vulnerable are weak, compromised, or absent. Sometimes it is a family trapped in poverty while public money disappears into favoritism, vanity, or political reward.

That is the real discrepancy and effects of bad governance. It is not only theft from the treasury. It is theft from life chances, from dignity, from safety, and from hope. When billions are wasted, the poor do not merely become poorer. They become invisible. And when citizens die because they cannot afford to seek care overseas, while the political class quietly preserves access to better options for itself, the message is unmistakable: there are two Guyanas, and only one of them is protected.

This is also why the abuse of law is so dangerous. When cybercrime laws, or any other laws, are used to intimidate critics, suppress lawful protest, or chill dissent, the state crosses from incompetence into authoritarian habit. The constitution becomes decorative. The right to speak becomes conditional. The right to protest becomes something the powerful tolerate only when it is harmless.

The apologist’s excuse

There is always someone ready with the same tired defense: “At least things are improving,” or “Where were you when the other side was in power?” These lines are not arguments. They are escape hatches. They are the language of people who have made peace with failure because they fear the consequences of demanding better.

Yes, governments differ. Yes, history matters. But no administration gets a free pass simply because its predecessor was also defective. That logic has trapped this country for too long. It encourages citizens to compare disappointments instead of demanding standards. It turns national life into a contest of who disappointed us less, rather than who served the public best.

Progress that depends on silence about disconnected governance and corruption is not progress. Development that coexists with selective justice is not development. And reform that asks people to be grateful while their rights are still being treated as favors is not reform at all.

What must change

Guyana does have money. What it lacks is consistent political will, institutional courage, and an electorate that refuses to be managed by fear, handouts, or partisan loyalty. If the country is serious about recovery, then the standard must rise across the board.

That means real accountability, not staged outrage. It means independent oversight bodies that can act without political interference. It means procurement systems that are open to scrutiny. It means courts that are accessible to ordinary people, not only to those with connections. It means laws that protect dissent rather than punish it. It means Parliament behaving like a democratic institution, not a place for self-serving bargains and selective ethics.

It also means citizens must stop confusing survival with consent. Taking a small benefit from power does not erase the damage that power is doing. A “tap up” is not a substitute for justice. A project is not a substitute for integrity. A speech is not a substitute for service.

A final demand

This country does not need more excuses, more propaganda, or more photo opportunities. It needs leaders with the will to do right by the people and a public willing to hold them accountable when they do wrong.

We must stop accepting a system in which the powerful live large while the people are told to endure. We must stop treating rights as privileges. We must stop praising the minimum as though it were mercy. And we must stop rewarding the very habits that keep the country wounded.

The people’s lives are hard enough already. They should not also have to carry the cost of elite greed, political cowardice, and institutional failure. Guyana can do better than this. But it will only do better when its people decide that mediocrity is no longer acceptable, and that silence is no longer a safe place to hide.

 


THE 592 GUARDIAN 

Who’s Responsible, Who takes Responsibility

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

Who’s Responsible, Who takes Responsibility

OPINION: BY GHK LALL ◊ JULY 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recuse Them Now: The MV Barima Inquiry Cannot Begin While Its Subjects Still Hold the Keys

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THE 592 GUARDIAN EDITORIAL ♦  ACCOUNTABILITY.♦ JUSTICE

 EDITORIAL

Recuse Them Now: The MV Barima Inquiry Cannot Begin While Its Subjects Still Hold the Keys

July, 2026

On Tuesday, calls for the resignation of Minister of Public Works Juan Edghill were dismissed by Prime Minister Brigadier (Ret’d) Mark Phillips as noise — the Prime Minister’s own word, offered when he was asked directly whether the minister should go. BY Friday, on Boom FM, the same Prime Minister was speaking a markedly different language: commissions of inquiry, mandatory testing regimes, expanded CCTV coverage, psychosocial support for the bereaved. The velocity of that conversion should trouble every citizen paying attention, not reassure them. This is not principled evolution.

It is damage control, arriving days after Transparency International Guyana Inc. and virtually the entire parliamentary opposition had already said, in far plainer terms, what needed to happen.

WHAT IS ACTUALLY BEING ASKED

The demand is not novel, and it is not partisan noise. TIGI has called for the immediate recusal of Minister Edghill, Minister of Public Utilities and Aviation Deodat Indar, and the senior management of the Maritime Administration Department from any supervisory role in the investigation into this tragedy. The Opposition — APNU, the AFC, WIN and others rarely aligned on much else — has converged independently on the same position: both ministers should stand aside, and MARAD’s Director General should go with them, pending an inquiry conducted by qualified external maritime expertise. This news media  joins that call without reservation. Recusal is not resignation and it is not a verdict of guilt. It is the minimum precondition for an inquiry anyone can trust.

THE INTEGRITY PROBLEM THE PRIME MINISTER WILL NOT NAME

An independent Commission of Inquiry is only as credible as the evidentiary record it is built upon. Passenger manifests, ticketing records, port-clearance logs, dry-docking documentation, drug-testing compliance files — precisely the categories the Prime Minister himself listed as within the inquiry’s scope — do not exist in a vacuum.

They exist in filing systems and databases under the administrative custody of the ministries and the department now under scrutiny. TIGI has already flagged what it calls manifest fraud: initial records reportedly listing 116 passengers and 17 crew, against a death toll that has climbed past 100 with dozens still unaccounted for. Where the officials responsible for that manifest’s accuracy retain authority over the records during the investigative window, the opportunity to shape, misplace or quietly correct inconsistent documentation is not a hypothetical risk. It is a standing invitation, and it is precisely the condition recusal exists to foreclose.

MARAD cannot credibly investigate its own regulatory conduct without independent oversight.

Line management at MARAD and the Transport and Harbours Department has already been sent on administrative leave. That step, taken swiftly, only sharpens the question of why the ministers with direct oversight responsibility for those same agencies have not been asked to do the same. A department can be managed on an acting basis for the duration of an inquiry. The absence of that basic firewall between the investigated and the investigation is the gap this editorial exists to name.

THIS IS NOT GUYANA’S FIRST REHEARSAL OF THIS SCRIPT

The pattern is familiar, and it has a recent name: Mahdia. The 2023 dormitory fire that killed twenty children produced an inquiry, a report, and years of litigation in which the state has fought its own citizens in court rather than settle what its own process found. TIGI has explicitly invoked that precedent in demanding there be no repeat of it here.

Guyanese citizens are entitled to ask, in plain terms, whether the MV Barima inquiry is being designed to establish truth or to manage a news cycle until public attention moves on — while the state, years from now, is once again on the opposite side of a courtroom from the families it promised to stand with this week.

This is Guyana, and this pattern is commonplace here in a way it is not treated as normal elsewhere. That should be a source of national shame, not resignation.

THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS

The government’s decision to offer some families a flat GY$300,000 toward funeral expenses is being defended by the Prime Minister as emergency relief rather than compensation, with any compensation decision deferred until after the Commission of Inquiry reports. That distinction may be legally tidy. It is not the point. A sum that families and the parliamentary opposition alike have noted would not cover a burial was arrived at and disbursed without any visible consultation with the families receiving it.

Grief does not strip citizens of the standing to be consulted about what is done in their name and with their dead. An arbitrary figure, however well-intentioned, delivered top-down in the immediate aftermath of mass loss, reads less like empathy than like efficiency — the state moving to close a line item before it has finished counting bodies.

WHAT ACCOUNTABILITY CANNOT MEAN

The Prime Minister’s Friday remarks describe prospective reform: stronger testing, better port security, more cameras on the wharves. They say nothing about retrospective accountability for the specific chain of decisions that put an eighty-seven-year-old vessel, reportedly loaded well beyond any accurate count, on the water on the eighteenth of July. Reform of future procedure is not a substitute for accountability for this tragedy, and a government under sustained public pressure has every incentive to let the first stand in for the second. We will not allow that substitution to pass without challenge.

WHAT THE 592 GUARDIAN WILL BE WATCHING

We will be tracking, specifically: whether Minister Edghill and Minister Indar recuse themselves from any supervisory role over the Transport and Harbours Department and MARAD pending the Commission’s findings; whether the Commission’s terms of reference guarantee independent, unmediated access to original records rather than records filtered through the ministries under investigation; and whether the compensation process that follows the inquiry is negotiated with the families it concerns, rather than announced to them. The families of the MV Barima’s victims were promised truth.

Truth requires a record that has not been tampered with, and a process that treats the bereaved as parties to be consulted rather than a crisis to be managed. On the government’s current posture, neither has yet been demonstrated — only promised, in the same breath as an inquiry whose credibility depends on both.

— The Board

Nadir’s Confidentiality Directive Preceded APNU’s Bid for a Parliamentary Commission on of Inquiry 

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ♦ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM ♦PARLIAMENT / MV BARIMA

 Nadir’s Confidentiality Directive Preceded APNU’s Bid for a Parliamentary Commission on of Inquiry  

Speaker’s reminder on committee secrecy arrived with no committee assigned to the Barima matter — as the opposition moved to force a House-adopted inquiry with binding terms of reference

Georgetown, Guyana — July, 2026

Two moves inside the National Assembly this week, read together rather than apart, describe the shape of a single contest: whether Parliament — not the Executive — will set the terms on which the MV Barima disaster is investigated, and whether Monday’s sitting will be permitted to become the venue for that fight at all.

On Friday, Clerk of the National Assembly Sherlock Isaacs wrote to all Members of Parliament at the direction of Speaker Manzoor Nadir, drawing their attention to Standing Order No. 101 on the confidentiality of committee proceedings and Standing Order No. 103 on the premature publication of evidence.

The letter cautioned MPs against press statements, interviews, social media commentary or any public remarks on “committee proceedings” unless expressly authorised, and confined media briefings on such matters to a committee chairperson or another member the committee itself designates.

The difficulty, according to opposition parliamentarians, is that no committee proceeding exists for the directive to attach to. Members of the APNU opposition say they have received no written notice from the Clerk’s office assigning any Barima-related matter to a sectoral, special select, or any other parliamentary committee — and under the Assembly’s own practice, such an assignment would come to them in writing. As of this publication will neither the Speaker’s office nor the Clerk has responded to queries on which committee proceeding, if any, the July 24 directive was meant to protect.

If Standing Order 101 protects committee proceedings, and no committee has been assigned this matter, the directive is invoking a protection that currently has nothing to protect.

— Editorial assessment, The 592 Guardian

THE APNU LETTER

The confidentiality directive was issued the same week APNU parliamentary leader Dr Terrence Campbell wrote to Speaker Nadir proposing that the National Assembly use Monday’s sitting to debate and adopt terms of reference for an independent commission of inquiry into the July 18 sinking of the 87-year-old, Scottish-built MV Barima — a disaster that has unofficially claimed more than 100 lives.

Campbell’s letter proposes that the House itself, rather than the Executive alone, define and adopt the inquiry’s mandate. His draft terms of reference include:

  1. Establishing the facts of the sinking, including timeline, passenger and manifest records, cargo, and weather and navigation conditions.
  2. Determining causes and contributing factors, including vessel seaworthiness, crew qualifications, and compliance with maritime law and safety standards.
  3. Examining the adequacy and timeliness of the search-and-rescue response.
  4. Assessing the regulatory framework, inspection regimes and enforcement practices of maritime and port authorities, and identifying systemic failures.
  5. Examining any allegations of negligence, misconduct, corruption or breach of statutory duty, with recommendations for legal or disciplinary action.
  6. Recommending measures to improve passenger and crew safety and emergency preparedness.
  7. Empowering the inquiry to compel documents and summon witnesses, and to produce a full public report within a specified timeframe.
  8. Adopting interim measures to protect public safety pending the inquiry’s outcome.

PNCR General Secretary Sherwin Benjamin, whose party is APNU’s largest coalition partner, has signalled the opposition will not confine its pressure to the floor of the House. He has raised the prospect of “mass political activities” — a term opposition figures have used to mean street protest — if government does not accede to the demand for a parliamentary-adopted inquiry.

WHAT THE SEQUENCE SUGGESTS — AND WHAT IT DOESN’T YET PROVE

Opposition parliamentarians who spoke to this publication characterised the timing as more than coincidence, asserting that Campbell’s request for a House-adopted commission of inquiry is what prompted the Speaker’s confidentiality directive, and reading it as a signal that Nadir does not intend to allow APNU’s motion to proceed Monday. That is, at this stage, an account attributed to opposition sources describing their understanding of Nadir’s intent — not a confirmed sequence of cause and effect, and this publication has not independently established which letter reached the Speaker’s desk first, nor obtained any account from Nadir’s office of its own reasoning.

What is independently verifiable is narrower, and arguably still damning enough on its own terms: a confidentiality directive citing committee-secrecy provisions was issued with no committee assignment on record; it landed inside the same week the opposition moved formally to wrest control of the Barima inquiry’s terms away from the Executive and place them before the full House; and neither the Speaker nor the Clerk has yet explained, publicly, what proceeding the directive was protecting.

A Speaker acting to safeguard a live committee process does not normally need to explain himself. A Speaker whose directive appears to precede any such process does.

Monday’s order paper — specifically, whether Campbell’s motion is permitted to reach the floor at all — will be the more reliable indicator of intent than anything said about this week’s sequencing. If the motion is scheduled, debated and put to a vote, the confidentiality directive will read as an unrelated, if badly timed, procedural reminder. If it is deferred, ruled out of order, or quietly kept off the agenda, the pattern opposition MPs are describing will have hardened into something closer to demonstrated fact.

OUTSTANDING QUESTIONS

  • Which committee, if any, does the Speaker’s July 24 directive relate to, and when was it constituted?
  • Did Campbell’s letter reach the Speaker’s office before or after the Clerk’s directive was issued?
  • Will Campbell’s motion on CoI terms of reference appear on Monday’s order paper?
  • Has the Parliamentary Sectoral Committee on Economic Services — of which Minister Edghill is a member — met or been asked to consider any Barima-related matter?

This report distinguishes verified findings — the content of the Clerk’s letter, the absence of any recorded committee assignment, and the text of APNU’s proposed terms of reference — from claims attributed to opposition sources regarding the Speaker’s motive, which remain unconfirmed pending response from the Speaker’s and Clerk’s offices.

— The Board

Bought, Berthed, and Buried in Paperwork: How Guyana Let the MV Barima Sail Alone

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ♦EDITORIAL · ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM 

MARITIME GOVERNANCE / REGION ONE / INTERIM RESPONSE

Bought, Berthed, and Buried in Paperwork: How Guyana Let the MV Barima Sail Alone

An open cargo barge now stands in for a passenger and freight service to Port Kaituma that a $12.7 million Indian-built ferry was supposed to be running by 2023 — and the vessel that did make the run, uninsured and unaccompanied by an accurate passenger count, has taken dozens of lives.

THE 592 GUARDIAN EDITORIAL BOARD

An “IMPORTANT NOTICE” posted this week by the Ministry of Public Works, over the joint seal of the Ministry and the Transport and Harbours Department (T&HD), announces an “interim arrangement” for cargo shipment to Port Kaituma: an open barge, loading at the Kingston Goods Wharf on Saturday, July 25th, 2026, departing Georgetown on Monday, July 27th at 5 p.m. Cargo and essential supplies only. No passengers. The notice describes the service as “provided free of charge,” as though the state were extending a courtesy rather than discharging an obligation it has held, uninterrupted, since it became the sole operator on this route in 2019.

The notice does not name what it is standing in for. It does not have to. Nine days earlier, the vessel that has carried Region One’s cargo and passengers for more than four decades, the MV Barima, launched from that same Kingston wharf toward that same destination and never arrived. It capsized roughly seven miles off the Essequibo coast near Iron Punt on the night of Saturday, July 18th. As of this week, dozens are confirmed dead, dozens more remain missing, and the government’s own passenger manifest has been shown to not reflect who was actually on board.

A VESSEL BOUGHT, THEN LEFT IDLE FOR THREE YEARS

The government’s answer, when asked why an 87-year-old ferry was still the sole vessel on Guyana’s most isolated passenger and cargo route, has been consistent: a replacement already exists. Officials told the Associated Press that a US$12.7 million vessel purchased from India, the MV Ma Lisha, was “awaiting the completion of a special pier at Port Kaituma.”

That answer requires scrutiny, not acceptance. The Ma Lisha is not a vessel in transit or under construction. It is a finished ship that has been sitting in Guyanese waters, largely unused for its intended purpose, for more than three years.

2021

 Guyana signs a deal with Indian state shipbuilder Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Limited to construct the MV Ma Lisha, financed by a loan from the Government of India that required the vessel be built in India.
Apr 2023

 The MV Ma Lisha arrives in Guyana, acquired specifically to improve river transportation for hinterland communities in Region One — including Port Kaituma
2023 – 2026

 The Ministry of Public Works had announced, ahead of the vessel’s arrival, plans to upgrade the Port Kaituma wharf to receive it. The upgrade is not completed. The Ma Lisha instead sails a shorter route to Kumaka. It has still not made a maiden voyage to Port Kaituma.
 Jul 18 2026

 The MV Barima — the sole remaining vessel on the Georgetown–Port Kaituma route since 2019 — capsizes roughly seven miles offshore near Iron Punt with, by the government’s own later estimate, as many as 179 people aboard against a manifest of 116 to 133.
Jul 22, 2026

 Minister of Public Works Juan Edghill tells the National Toshaos Council that the Ma Lisha still has not sailed to Port Kaituma because the rebuilt wharf developed structural problems after the soil beneath it shifted, forcing sections to be reconstructed.
Jul 25–27, 2026

 The Ministry issues the “interim arrangement” notice: an open cargo barge, no passengers, to Port Kaituma — the service this newspaper is examining here.

Set beside each other, the record shows a government that had already diagnosed the exact failure now being mourned. The wharf upgrade was announced before the Ma Lisha even arrived in the country. The infrastructure gap was not discovered in the aftermath of the Barima tragedy — it was known, budgeted around, and left open for three years while the only alternative kept the route alive on borrowed time.

A FERRY THE MINISTER CALLED THE “VESSEL OF CHOICE” — DAYS BEFORE IT SANK

In the same National Toshaos Council remarks in which he explained the Ma Lisha’s continued idleness, Minister Edghill described the Barima, prior to its sinking, as the vessel “of choice for both residents and business people to get into Port Kaituma,” and said extensive maintenance work had been carried out on it. This was not an isolated defense. Following the capsizing, Edghill has repeatedly and specifically rejected the characterization that the vessel was unseaworthy.

“There was no report of any kind that suggested the vessel was unseaworthy. It was in line for dry docking in keeping with the schedule.”

— Minister of Public Works Juan Edghill, government press briefing, July 19, 2026

According to Edghill, the Barima was last dry-docked in 2024 and was scheduled to return to dry dock in the latter half of 2026, alongside the MV Malali and MB Hercules. That defense is narrower than it may appear. A vessel can pass a maintenance schedule and still be the wrong vessel for the route and the volume it was carrying. As one commentary in Guyana’s press put it in the days after the sinking:

There is a difference between a vessel that passes a paper test and a vessel that is right for the job. We kept a 1939 hull as the sole lifeline to Port Kaituma, Morawhanna, Kumaka and Mabaruma long after we told ourselves we would retire her.

— Demerara Waves, staff commentary, July 22, 2026

This publication will takes. no position on the technical seaworthiness of the MV Barima; that is precisely what a Commission of Inquiry and independent naval architects, not politicians and not this editorial board, must determine. What is not in dispute, because the government has stated it directly, is this: the Barima operated without commercial insurance, and its passenger manifest failed to account for everyone who was aboard.

NO INSURANCE, NO ACCURATE COUNT OF WHO WAS ABOARD

Two admissions from senior officials, made at a Tuesday press briefing, deserve to be read together rather than separately, because each describes a different layer of the same failure of oversight.

First, on insurance. Minister Edghill confirmed that the Barima was not insured when it capsized, and characterized this as long-standing government practice: state-owned vessels operate without commercial insurance, with the government itself assuming the financial risk of loss or compensation.

Officials did not say whether a dedicated fund or formal self-insurance mechanism exists for maritime accidents of this scale, and it remains unclear what compensation, if any, is available to survivors and to the families of the dead.

Second, on the manifest. Prime Minister Brigadier (Ret’d) Mark Phillips acknowledged “a breakdown in the system” after it emerged that a substantial number of rescued passengers were never listed on the vessel’s official manifest — meaning that in the earliest and most critical hours of the search, rescuers did not have a reliable count of how many people they were even looking for. The Guyana Police Force has since extracted surveillance footage from the Kingston Goods Wharf specifically to reconstruct the loading and dispatch sequence, because the paper record could not be trusted to do so.

Both admissions came bundled with reassurance rather than resignation. Phillips said the manifest breakdown would form part of the forthcoming Commission of Inquiry, which he said would investigate “the extent of the failures” and recommend disciplinary measures. That the Prime Minister of an oil-producing nation now sitting on some of the largest per-capita petroleum revenues in the hemisphere must convene a Commission of Inquiry to establish how many people were on a government ferry is, in itself, the story.

WHAT THE RECORD DOES NOT YET SHOW

In the interest of the strict distinction this news media draws between verified finding and attributed allegation, it should be stated plainly: no inspection or technical report has been shown, in the public record reviewed for this piece, to have specifically failed the MV Barima or to have triggered a denial of insurance coverage. Minister Edghill has repeatedly and specifically denied that any such report existed. Separately, opposition figures — including former Minister of Public Infrastructure David Patterson and Forward Guyana Movement leader Amanza Walton-Desir — have called for the vessel’s full maintenance, inspection, dry-docking, and certification history to be handed to independent investigators, and have noted that a prior system of independent vessel inspectors was disbanded and, to their knowledge, never replaced with equivalent oversight.

Those are two different, unresolved questions, and this news media will not conflate them: whether the Barima’s technical condition was properly assessed before it sailed, and whether the oversight architecture meant to catch a failure like that even still existed. The government’s insistence that no report declared the vessel unfit does not answer the second question. It may not need to have declared the vessel unfit for the system to have failed.

QUESTIONS THE 592 GUARDIAN IS PUTTING TO THE MINISTRY OF PUBLIC WORKS

This news-media is formally requesting, and will continue to press for, answers to the following from the Ministry of Public Works and the Transport and Harbours Department:

  1. What is the current, itemized completion status of the Port Kaituma wharf upgrade, including the date the soil-shift defect was first identified, and by whom?
  2. What was the total cost, to date, of the MV Ma Lisha’s three years of idleness — including berthing, crewing, and maintenance costs for a vessel not performing its intended function?
  3. Will the Ministry release the MV Barima’s full maintenance, inspection, dry-docking, and certification records to independent investigators, as called for by former Minister David Patterson, and on what timeline?
  4. When was the independent vessel-inspection system referenced by opposition leader Amanza Walton-Desir disbanded, who made that decision, and what oversight mechanism, if any, replaced it?
  5. Is the current “free of charge” open-barge cargo notice intended as a temporary bridge to restored Ma Lisha service, and if so, what is the projected date passenger service to Port Kaituma resumes on any vessel?

The people of Port Kaituma, Morawhanna, Kumaka, and Mabaruma were not asking for luxury. They were asking, for well over a decade by some accounts, for a seaworthy, adequately overseen, and accurately accounted-for way to reach their own capital and return. A government that can find US$12.7 million for a new hull ought to be capable of finishing a wharf, insuring a vessel carrying human lives, and counting its own passengers. Until it demonstrates that capability, an open barge carrying only cargo — offered, notice says as a free service — is not evidence of state generosity. It is the visible residue of a state that built the boat and forgot the dock.

— The Board

WAVES OF LOSSES

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THE 592 GUARDIAN.♦·  ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM ♦  SPECIAL FEATURE

Dear Editor,

WAVES OF LOSSES

Our sincere condolences go out to all those who suffered from the M.V. Barima’s tragedy.

“A night of quest, when many went to rest”

A dark, troubling Saturday night,

At sea in July’2026, there was no light.

As the waves grew in height,

The water lashed with all its might.

 

It was the 18th, many felt it right,

To board the MV Barima, when it was bright.

Leaving Georgetown, somewhat in delight,

Families looked forward to arrive home, alright.

 

The moon hid, perhaps a sign of blight,

Unseen stars, they too, took a flight.

No one imagined a moment of fright,

When, for their lives, all had to fight!

 

As danger struck, it became a Titanic plight,

A boat, once afloat, was no longer upright.

The water rose, it was a sorrowful sight,

Cold and callous, fear and despair, alight.

Endangerment knew not how to be polite,

It did not prejudice the color of black nor white.

Drama nor trauma, no one did invite,

What remained was a dreadful site!

 

An SOS call, a distress signal ultimately ignite,

Near Iron Punt, an urgent response did incite.

Search and rescue teams, in all their mite,

Went bravely, not to quit but to unite.

 

Many a soul lost, like a fallen kite,

Many will not enjoy another drink or bite.

This tragedy will forever excite,

A mournful story to write and rewrite.

 

Yours respectfully,

Jai Lall

 

THE  PRESIDENT CANNOT APPOINT AN INDEPENDENT COI

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THE 592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM ♦ GUYANA 

PRESS RELEASE

THE  PRESIDENT CANNOT APPOINT AN INDEPENDENT COI

The President of Guyana’s intention to announce the membership of a Commission of Inquiry into the Barima tragedy was not unexpected and confirms widespread fears that the Inquiry will be another instance of institutionalized political debauchery in which those responsible are allowed to control the account of their own failures. Notwithstanding the credentials of whoever the President has nominated, the fact of being appointed solely by those with most to lose by an impartial enquiry robs the exercise of credibility. 

Over the past week the GHRA has exchanged views with a range of people and institutions which have influenced the following comments.

Firstly, a positive duty of candour must be imposed on public authorities and officials to tell the truth to the Commission of Inquiry and cooperate proactively with investigations under pain of sanction, including prosecution and prison sentences. The knowledge that decisions must later be fully explained can deter reckless decisions before catastrophe occurs. 

Here in Guyana, the widespread violence, curfews and bloodshed provoked by contaminated investigation by official agencies into the death of 11-yearold Adrianne in a hotel swimming-pool in 2024 caused widespread street violence, curfew and public outcry and is still vividly remembered.

Secondly, the State must provide bereaved families with funded legal representation – in the same way as public bodies will benefit from them. 

Thirdly, a further operation rule of the conduct of a public enquiry must be that the Chairperson of the Enquiry – not the agencies under scrutiny – must have the power to determine admissibility of evidence or whether ‘national security’ can be invoked to protect official agencies.

No opportunity has been afforded to date to the public or any civic organization to discuss these or similar proposals. Those nominated by the President can expect to be questioned as to their position on such matters.

The first task, therefore, for those seeking an impartial enquiry is to identify the principles and structure that protect its impartiality. 

  • The GHRA would recommend a 7-person Parliamentary Commission with three members appointed by the Government and three by the Leader of the Opposition. The President of the Commission should have a judicial background and be drawn preferably from the Caribbean and be endorsed by the Commission members. 
  • sanctions should be spelt out and applied to any public official who attempts to mislead or divert the Enquiry or is less than candid in his/her testimony.
  • Proceedings of the Commission must be public and open to broadcast media under rules guided by fairness and practical considerations. 
  • Consideration must be given to  Parliamentarians who condone a tainted enquiry, as exposing themselves to being guilty of misconduct in public office and possible criminal prosecution.  

The unwillingness of the Government to select a Commission format broadly acceptable to parliamentary and civic opinion suggests that the Guyanese people need to give time to devising  acceptable alternative peaceful ways of policy-making.  

One such strategy might be to be advance a joint political/civic approach to urging the Government to adopt a more acceptable form of an independent COI.  The mechanics and format of such civic-political initiatives need careful attention. At this point, however, we are seeking an agreement in principle from civic bodies to such holding joint meetings on the Barima tragedy.

Emergence of new civic/political strategies, would more likely prosper were parliamentary opposition to begin functioning as a single unit under the leadership of the leader of the Opposition, bringing to an end the discredited and ineffective self-centred posturing which currently frustrates effective Parliamentary opposition. 

GHRA Exec Committee

Guyana Human Rights Association

July 25 2016

56B Austin Place & Hadfield Street, P O Box 10653, Georgetown, Guyana, South America

Tel: (592)-226-1789/-227-4911     e-mail: ghraguy@gmail.com

 

WE HEAR THE NOISE” IS NOT AN ANSWER.

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THE 592 GUARDIAN. ◊ RELEASE◊ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM

 

WE HEAR THE NOISE” IS NOT AN ANSWER: TIGI  DEMANDS AN INTERNATIONAL INVESTIGATION AND RECUSAL OF EDGHILL, INDAR, AND MARAD LEADERSHIP.

IMMEDIATE PRESS RELEASE 

 Transparency International Guyana Inc. The Amerindian Peoples Association Rescue Guyana and 592 Gurdian demand an IMO-led international investigation and the recusal of the ministers and agency heads whose oversight failed.

 THE SCALE OF THE FAILURE

The MV Barima capsized off the Pomeroon coast late Saturday, July 18, carrying far more people than the government first acknowledged. Initial reports placed 116 passengers and 17 crew aboard; that figure was later revised upward to 179 after officials reviewed boarding footage. As of this week, 27 bodies have been recovered, 69 people rescued, and 83 remain unaccounted for. The vessel was 89 years old.

The gap between the manifest and the true passenger count sits at the center of this tragedy, not its margins. Minister of Public Works Juan Edghill has himself called the discrepancy “criminal.” The captain and first engineer are in police custody after both reportedly tested positive for narcotics.

A TRAGEDY FORETOLD

The Amerindian Peoples Association said plainly what North-West residents have said for years: this was a tragedy waiting to happen. The route is used disproportionately by Indigenous Guyanese, for whom river travel is not a convenience but the only affordable way to reach medical care, school, and commerce in Georgetown. An 89-year-old vessel was allowed to keep carrying that population, undetected overloading and all.

CONTRADICTIONS AT THE TOP

Minister of Public Utilities and Aviation Deodat Indar — who, until September 2025, served as Minister within the Ministry of Public Works with shared responsibility for the Transport and Harbours Department — first stated categorically that the MV Barima was not overloaded, then reversed himself days later, alleging criminal conduct. A sitting minister cannot publicly prejudge the very facts an independent investigation exists to determine and then oversee that same investigation. The same conflict applies to Minister Edghill and to MARAD’s own leadership, who cannot credibly investigate their own regulatory failures.

Prime Minister Mark Phillips’s response, when asked directly whether Edghill should go, was that he “hears the noise” — while pointing to President Ali, who was out of the country in Canada when the disaster struck. That is not leadership. It is the delegation of accountability to an absent principal.

Safe transportation is not a privilege; it is a fundamental right that every person in Guyana deserves, regardless of whether they travel by road, air or river.

— Amerindian Peoples Association

TIGI JOINS THE CALL

Transparency International Guyana Inc., through Executive Member Fred Collins, has now added its voice to Rescue Guyana’s and the APA’s. Collins was direct: Guyanese have no appetite for another domestic inquiry that collapses into what he called a “circus maximus.”

The reference is not abstract. In May 2023, 20 children — most of them Indigenous girls — burned to death in the Mahdia Secondary School dormitory fire. A Presidential Commission of Inquiry followed. Three years later, families remain in the High Court, alleging the State pressured them into grossly inadequate settlements without independent legal advice, then fought to have their claims struck out entirely. That is the precedent Collins is naming: a domestic process that ended not in justice, but in the state litigating against grieving families for years. No one is prepared to watch that repeat.

WHAT MUST HAPPEN NOW

TIGI, joined by civil society groups The Amerindian Peoples Association and Rescue Guyana — with the full backing of The 592 Guardian — demand:

  1. An independent, impartial and objective international investigation led by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), staffed by global maritime experts with no institutional stake in the outcome — not a domestic Commission of Inquiry under government control.
  2. The inclusion of international civil society organisations with an established presence in Guyana as full members of that Commission, not observers.
  3. The immediate recusal of Minister Juan Edghill, Minister Deodat Indar, and MARAD’s senior leadership from any role in the investigation. If President Ali is sincere about the transparency and accountability, he has personally promised the families of the deceased, this is the minimum test of that sincerity — not a discretionary courtesy to ministers he appointed.
  4. No repeat of the Mahdia model. The public will not accept another inquiry that produces a report while the state simultaneously fights its own citizens in court for years afterward.
  5. Full public accounting of the manifest fraud — how dozens of additional souls went uncounted, who is responsible, and what enforcement follows.

A SEPARATE, UNVERIFIED CONCERN

Separately, reports circulating today allege that Opposition Member of Parliament Sherod Duncan was arrested at Charity, Essequibo, while operating a drone near the area where families are gathered awaiting news of loved ones. Duncan has reportedly said he was filming recovery vessels offshore, as he had done on prior days, when a police officer instructed him to stop; two senior officers then told him they were acting on instructions. The 592 Guardian has not independently verified this account and will update as it is confirmed. If accurate, it raises a legitimate question the government owes the public an answer to: why restrict press and public documentation at a site the state says it is handling with full transparency?

THE STAKES

Guyana’s institutions have exhausted the public’s trust. This is no longer a domestic accountability question alone — it is a call for the international community’s attention and assistance, so that the families of the MV Barima can get what the Mahdia families are still fighting for years later: the truth, and justice, without having to sue the state to get it.