PRESS RELEASE -NIS Minimum Pensioners Take National Insurance Board to Court

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PRESS STATEMENT BY: CHRIS RAM Social Justice Advocate October 2026

NIS Minimum Pensioners Take National Insurance Board to Court

An application for judicial review was filed today in the High Court against the National Insurance Board over its failure, since January 2021, to pay the minimum old-age pension at the lawful rate. The Applicants are civil society activist Christopher Ram, pensioner Kalicharan Heera, the Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers, the United Minibus Union and the Guyana Market Vendors Union. They ask the Court to declare mandatory the floor of 50% of the Public Service minimum wage. They also ask it to order payment of the NIS minimum pension at that rate, and to order an account and payment of all arrears since 2021, with interest, including to the estates of deceased pensioners.

Regulation 4(b) of the NIS Benefit Regulations provides that the pension shall “in no case” be less than 50% of the Public Service minimum wage. The Board broadly honoured this until 2020. Since 2021 the wage has risen every year while the pension lagged behind. Today the floor is $51,173, but minimum pensioners receive only $43,075, a shortfall of $8,098 every month. On the Applicants’ calculation, persons receiving the minimum pension throughout the period since 2021 are owed about $510,300 each. 

The NIS has never doubted its obligation. The Benefit Regulations set it out, and the NIS website, Annual Reports and actuarial reports repeated it: the minimum pension must not be less than 50% of the Public Service minimum wage. Parliament was also put on notice. In 2024, Annette Ferguson MP tabled a Motion, seconded by Juretha Fernandes MP, calling on Government to make retroactive payments to minimum pensioners for 2021 to 2023. The Motion was disallowed, and the pensioners remain unpaid.

Dr Ashni Singh, the Minister responsible for the NIS, has had several roles and many opportunities to pay pensioners their due. As Minister with responsibility for finance, he also oversees the Co-operative Finance Administration, which supervises the Board, and he makes the Benefit Regulations. He presented every Budget that raised the Public Service minimum wage, and each increase should have lifted the pension floor with it. The Minister must be taken to know the law. He cannot plead ignorance of a rule he himself administers.

The Applicants will serve the Board and the Attorney General, the Government’s Chief Legal Adviser. Under section 34(2) of the National Insurance and Social Security Act, Parliament must make up any shortfall in the National Insurance Fund. If the Scheme cannot pay what the law guarantees, the Government must.

By its own words, the Board has consistently acknowledged the 50% floor and, with it, its obligation. The Applicants invite the Board to assist the Court in resolving this matter quickly and in the interests of the pensioners it serves.

The Applicants are represented by Khemraj Ramjattan and Christopher Ram, Attorneys-at-Law.

Christopher Ram & Associates, Attorneys-at-Law

12 October 2026

Brazil’s Vote Is Bigger Than Brazil:

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 Brazil’s Vote Is Bigger Than Brazil: Can Latin America Resist a New Era of External Political Control?

OPINION BY : Hem Kumar October 2026

This election has the makings of what powerful outside regional forces does to accountability. This is  the danger of treating the alleged regional “rightward shift” as purely organic when outside pressure, economic coercion, and ideological alignment may be shaping electoral conditions.

Brazil’s presidential election is being watched as a referendum not merely on President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, but on whether Latin America can preserve its political independence amid a mounting right-wing realignment across the hemisphere. Round One is completed and will be concluded in its entirety on Oct 25.   

The  widely open contest between Lula and Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, son of jailed former President Jair Bolsonaro, is presented as another ideological clash between the left and the right. But that description is too narrow. At stake is whether democratic choice in Latin America can remain genuinely sovereign when powerful foreign interests openly seek to influence the political direction of the region.

Brazil is Latin America’s largest economy, its most populous country, a leading BRICS member, and the custodian of much of the Amazon. Its foreign-policy orientation affects energy security, climate diplomacy, trade, regional integration, relations with China, and the balance of power between Washington and the developing world.

A Lula victory would preserve a major counterweight to a growing bloc of conservative, Trump-aligned governments. A Bolsonaro victory would likely accelerate a regional shift towards Washington’s strategic preferences, weaken Latin America’s collective independence, and deepen a political environment in which governments are judged less by their domestic record than by their willingness to align with imperialists  power.

The “Right-Wing Wave” Is Not Just Electoral

It is tempting to describe recent elections in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Honduras and elsewhere as a simple popular revolt against left-wing governments. Certainly, voter frustration is real. High food prices, insecurity, unemployment, corruption, failing public services and distrust of political elites have created fertile ground for right-wing candidates who promise order, austerity, punishment and a decisive break with the status quo.

But economic frustration alone does not explain the region’s political trajectory.

Across Latin America, right-wing movements increasingly benefit from an ecosystem of external pressure and support: influential media networks, social-media disinformation, ideological organisations, business interests, diplomatic pressure, sanctions, targeted trade measures and overt political endorsement from foreign leaders.

That does not mean every right-wing victory is illegitimate. Citizens have every right to reject incumbents. Governments that fail to manage inflation, reduce violence, deliver jobs, or curb corruption should face electoral consequences.

The concern arises when external actors use their economic and geopolitical power to make certain electoral outcomes more costly than others.

If tariffs, aid threats, sanctions, visa restrictions, judicial pressure or diplomatic intimidation are deployed to punish a country for its internal democratic choices, then elections no longer occur on a level playing field. Voters are not simply deciding between candidates. They are being told, implicitly or explicitly, that one choice will invite external economic pain while another may earn favor.

That is not democratic partnership. It is political coercion.

The Return of the Monroe Doctrine

The reported revival of a “Donroe Doctrine” should alarm every country in Latin America and the Caribbean, regardless of its ideological orientation.

The original Monroe Doctrine evolved from a stated opposition to European intervention into a rationale for United States intervention throughout the hemisphere. Its legacy includes occupations, coups, covert operations, economic pressure and support for authoritarian regimes whenever Washington believed its strategic, commercial or ideological interests were at risk.

The central danger today is not that history will repeat itself in precisely the same form. It is that modern tools have made interference easier to disguise.

Intervention no longer has to arrive through soldiers or a formal coup. It can arrive through a punitive tariff. It can be applied through financial restrictions, selective sanctions, social-media manipulation, election narratives, lawfare, pressure on courts, support for politically connected organizations, or efforts to undermine public trust in electoral institutions.

A country can retain the appearance of electoral democracy while its political space is steadily narrowed by forces beyond its borders.

Brazil’s experience is particularly significant because of the allegations that the United States has used politically motivated tariffs and sanctions in connection with the prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro. If a foreign government can openly pressure a sovereign state to abandon or alter legal proceedings involving a former president, the implications extend far beyond Brazil.

It sends a message to judges, prosecutors, electoral authorities and governments throughout the region: accountability will be tolerated only if it does not inconvenience powerful external interests.

 Brazil Is the Decisive Test

Lula’s government has its vulnerabilities. It must answer to Brazilians about the cost of living, public safety, corruption, employment and the day-to-day frustrations that drive anger at incumbents everywhere.

No government should be insulated from criticism simply because it identifies as progressive, nationalist, anti-imperialist or democratic. Lula’s record, policies and promises must stand or fall on their merits before Brazilian voters

But the election cannot be understood solely through domestic grievances.

Lula represents a vision of Brazil that seeks strategic autonomy: engagement with the United States and Europe, but also deeper cooperation with China, BRICS countries, Africa and the wider Global South. That position conflicts with any foreign-policy doctrine that demands unquestioned hemispheric obedience to Washington.

Flavio Bolsonaro, by contrast, represents a political current more closely aligned with the ideological agenda of Donald Trump and the regional right. His campaign’s promises of a harder security posture, tighter spending controls and closer US coordination may resonate with voters concerned about crime and economic instability. Yet his candidacy also raises a larger question: will Brazil’s next government be guided principally by Brazilian interests, or by a political alliance whose centre of gravity lies outside Brazil?

That is the real issue confronting the electorate.

A Hemisphere Cannot Be Governed by Pressure

Latin America does not need a regional order in which governments are selected, rewarded or punished according to their loyalty to Washington, Beijing, Moscow, Brussels, or any outside capital.

The region needs governments that are accountable to their own people; institutions strong enough to investigate corruption without political intimidation; electoral systems protected from foreign influence; and economies resilient enough that trade, finance and aid cannot be weaponized against democratic decision-making.

For small states, including those in the Caribbean, this lesson is especially urgent. When major powers treat sovereignty as conditional, smaller countries face the greatest vulnerability. They may be pressured to choose sides, surrender policy independence, accept unequal commercial arrangements, or remain silent about abuses in exchange for temporary economic protection.

Guyana and the Caribbean should watch Brazil closely. The precedent being set is not limited to Brasília. It concerns whether nations of the hemisphere can pursue independent trade, energy, climate and diplomatic policies without becoming targets of retaliation.

The Question After Sunday

If Lula prevails, it will not end Latin America’s ideological struggle. Nor will it erase popular anger over economic hardship, insecurity and political corruption. But it could slow the rush toward a hemisphere dominated by leaders whose political legitimacy is intertwined with external patronage and geopolitical alignment.

If Bolsonaro wins, the result must still be respected if it reflects a free, fair and transparent vote. Democracy does not mean accepting only outcomes one likes.

However, democratic legitimacy requires more than ballots being cast. It requires an electoral environment free from intimidation, economic blackmail, disinformation, coercive foreign pressure and selective interference by powerful states.

Brazil’s election will therefore be a test not only of Lula’s political strength or Bolsonaro’s appeal. It will test whether Latin America can remain a collection of sovereign republics rather than a geopolitical battleground in which external powers decide which democracies are acceptable.

The people of Brazil must decide Brazil’s future. The people of Latin America must decide Latin America’s future. No doctrine, no tariff, no sanction, and no foreign president should be permitted to decide it for them.

Accountability is real, not fantasy

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Accountability is real, not fantasy

OPINION BY: GHK LALL October 2026

Interested in accountability?  There’s a guarantee.  Excellency Ali delivered that commitment six years ago.  Given that span, accountability in national institutions, in government and leadership, should be well-refined. 

It is.  But in the wrong direction.  For there is the cry and call for accountability in the matter of a rape allegedly by a senior police officer, and this is what it looks like.  Silence.  Distance.  Wait a week.  Then the trailer of the bizarre in the making.  A minister taking the bit between her teeth, and left with reddened lips.  It’s not lipstick.

Here’s a Common Entrance level question.  A poor man, a laborer, an unconnected citizen is named as the perpetrator of a felony, do the Police rush into action?  True or False.  Beginning and ending of test.  From the textbook and classroom to the thoroughfares of real life.  A senior police officer is alleged by the victim to be her attacker.  What happens?   

The wheels of justice are drained of energy.  The guardians of justice and fairness-what’s due to all parties in a sordid development-all fall silent, are suddenly busy with other challenges.  Phones calls not answered, not returned.  WhatsApp questions ignored, as though to answer would give away too much, maybe improperly jeopardize the interests of the accused.  Point taken.

But there is a victim, as claimed.  There is a process that should have kicked into high gear, regardless if a head of state is involved, or a reckless citizen who lost his head.  After all the training delivered, all the solemn oaths sworn, all the broadcasts of how much have been done, and how much progress has been made, this cannot be where Guyana is.  Where the Guyana Police Force is.  Where the Guyana Government is.

A king could be involved, and there is no divine right to rape.  A president could be fingered, and once a felony has been established, then the law does not grant immunity.  There is a man who has a big voice and who likes to talk big about the law.  C’mon, Mr. Big Man!  A big hand is needed, sir.  Step forward and give it, please.  One recommendation is that the Guyana Police cannot investigate itself.  There’s bad precedent.  If six-execution-style murders, with evidence attached, could be wished away inside the Guyana Police Force (and above it), then it’s not that difficult for a rape allegation of a favorite son to disappear.  Why compound a bad situation with a bad decision that could only lead to a bad conclusion?  I advance.

Why is it that so many things that have crime written across their faces have to diminish to the weak, to the walking back of leadership guarantees, and to the wretched left hanging in the wind? 

There is no intention of pronouncing on guilt or innocence in this rape allegation.  Too many unknowns.  Too many layers.  My sole interest is in consistent standards.  Go back to the one-question Common Entrance test.  What goes for Guyanese peasant must also go for the PPP aristocracy. 

One exception would be too many.  One dodge, one delay, one double-dealing, one doubletalk would be fatal.  Opens the door to every disbelief and rejection, no matter how clean and pristine.

Guyana is a country with a constitution and sacred rights.  Or it is a criminal construct; one subject to the cleverness of the crafty, sinister, and sick.  Where smaller citizens-workers, women, wretched-are seen as prey by predators.  Those wearing suits.  Those who may be uniformed or not. 

When government circles the wagons with silence and haze, it leaves its behind exposed, and gathers mud on its face.

The victim is entitled to protection and peace of mind.  Justice is being pursued; the law followed.  The alleged rapist is afforded every right, free of stench or taint, at present.  This is what accountability looks like.  This is how it’s delivered. 

Last, if the man cannot be sent home, then the minister can arrange secondment to her office and place him in a comfortable backroom, until every last straw is examined.  Accountability 101.  No bail, only jail.  Justice is served.  For now.

THE STATE THAT CANNOT SAY NO-Part V — The Land Was Never For Sale 

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THE STATE THAT CANNOT SAY NO

Part V — The Land Was Never For Sale 

Copy of grant recorded in Sept 1991 – specifically states ( from time immemorial been in occupation) by the community of Chinese Landing

OPINION BY : Hem Kumar October 2026

Every argument in this series so far has accepted a premise worth questioning: that Tassawini was, at some point, legitimately available for the State to auction. Section 48 of the Amerindian Act asks whether proper consent was obtained. Section 50 asks whether government had the power to override a refusal.The 2021 ruling asked whether minerals vest in the state regardless of surface title.

All of these are consent questions. None of them asks the prior question — whether Tassawini was ever, in law, available to be sold in the first place. It was not.

Buried in the Mining Act’s current Section 111 is a doctrine with a name almost nobody uses anymore: quiet enjoyment. Its lineage runs back to 1903, when the colonial Mining Ordinance declared that “all land occupied or used by the Aboriginal Indians, and all land necessary for the quiet enjoyment by the Aboriginal Indians of any Indian Settlement, shall be deemed to be lawfully occupied by them.”

The wording survived, nearly untouched, through the 1905 Mining Regulations and into the Mining Act that governs Guyana today. Land necessary for an Indigenous community’s quiet enjoyment is not land the State owns and may dispose of at auction. It is land the law already treats as theirs.

In 1995, when the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission auctioned Prospecting Permit 14—95 to Wayne Vieira, it did so on the understanding that Tassawini was State Land. It was not. Chinese Landing had held legal title to that ground since 1976 — nineteen years before the auction GGMC conducted. The permit forms GGMC itself issued carried a saving clause excepting “all lands lawfully located or held under title.”

Tassawini was such land. The auction excepted the very ground it purported to sell.

This is not a new argument invented for this newsroom. It is the argument made, with full documentary support, in a peer-reviewed study published this year by researchers at the University of British Columbia, drawing on thirty years of Chinese Landing’s own paper archive — correspondence the Council kept without an office, without a filing cabinet, without the infrastructure most institutions take for granted, because an institution that held it would not need the villagers to.

A SECOND SPINE, INDEPENDENT OF THE FIRST

The quiet enjoyment argument stands on land law. It does not need an environmental case to succeed. But Guyana’s Constitution supplies one anyway, and this publication  has not, until now, drawn on it.

Article 36 commits the State to “improve the environment… in the interest of the present and future generations.” Article 149J goes further, making that commitment a right rather than an aspiration: every citizen has an entitlement to an environment “not harmful to his or her health or well-being,” and a duty on the State to take reasonable measures to secure it.

Read together with Article 154A — the provision, already central to this series, that makes Guyana’s ratified international human rights treaties domestically enforceable — these articles do not merely describe an aspiration. They describe a standard the State has bound itself to meet, and against which Tassawini can be measured directly.

The measurement is not favorable. This publication  has already reported the government’s own 2023 mercury testing: of forty-six households approached, twenty-three people were actually sampled. Five came back safe. One measured ten times the safe threshold. Read plainly, that is seventy-eight percent of those tested carrying unsafe mercury levels in their blood — in a government report whose own author concluded there was “no alarming trend toward mercury toxicity,” reasoning only that no single sample reached the acute poisoning threshold.

A standard that excuses a seventy-eight percent failure rate because nobody died of it outright is not a standard. It is a formula for permitting harm up to the point just short of catastrophe.

AN AGENCY THAT WAITS TO BE TOLD

Guyana’s Environmental Protection Act has required an environmental impact assessment for mining operations like Vieira’s since 1996 — thirty years, under Section 11 and the Act’s own Schedule 4. It is not optional, and it is not contingent on a complaint. It is a precondition the law attaches to the activity itself.

There is no public record of one ever having been conducted at Tassawini.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s posture across this entire thirty-year dispute follows a pattern this newsroom has already documented in GGMC: an agency that acts only when instructed, and only in direct response to outside pressure, never on the strength of its own statutory mandate. The EPA’s name appears in this record exactly once with any independent weight; as one participant among several government bodies on the August 2023 fact-finding mission that followed the IACHR’s precautionary measures.

It did not arrive at Tassawini because the law required an assessment. It arrived because an international human rights body had already forced the government’s hand, and someone needed to be seen doing something. No comprehensive environmental or social impact assessment of the kind the Council itself requested from the IACHR — and the kind Section 11 has required all along; appears to have followed.

This is not an agency enforcing an environmental law. It is an agency attending a damage-control exercise organized by other people, for other reasons, and then going quiet again.

WHAT THIS DOES TO THE REST OF THE RECORD

None of this erases the consent failures already documented in this series — the 1998 Georgetown signing, the 2001 permits issued without a word to the Council, the 2026 individual-signature arrangement that bypassed the Village meeting Section 48 requires. Those remain what they were: proof that even after Tassawini was wrongly classified as available, nobody could manage to ask its owners honestly.

But two independent legal theories now converge on the same conclusion from different directions. One says the land was never the State’s to sell. The other says that whatever has happened on it since has violated a constitutional environmental duty the State owes to everyone, Indigenous or not.

Neither depends on the other holding up in court. Both point to the same institutions — GGMC and the EPA — failing by the same method: waiting to be made to act, rather than acting because the law already told them to.

Guyana has a comparator worth naming. In March 2024, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled against Peru for its decades-long failure to regulate the La Oroya smelter, finding that the State’s inaction itself violated residents’ right to a healthy environment.

Guyana is a signatory to the same regional human rights architecture. Article 154A does not let it treat that architecture as someone else’s problem.

— The Board

Future Guyana : Populism or Meritocracy? 

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  Future Guyana : Populism or Meritocracy? 

OPINION BY: Hem Kumar October 2026

Guyana Must Not Build an Oil Republic on Patronage, Fear and Political Theatre

“One of the burdens that harm our society is ‘digital populism’: excessive individual protagonism, strongman rule, messianism, and the posturing of those who gain popularity simply by appearing more on social media.Another dangerous practice that could derail Guyana’s development and undermine its aspiration to attain “world-class” status is influence peddling—commonly manifested through cronyism and nepotism, the corrosive culture of rewarding “family, friends and favorites” rather than competence, integrity and merit.”
“A form of favoritism within a group that involves bias in granting jobs and benefits to friends or trusted colleagues, affecting the legitimate rights of others, especially in politics and its relations with affiliated organizations. It manifests itself when close associates are appointed to positions of authority without considering their qualifications, in contrast to meritocracy. In politics, the term ‘cronyism’ has a negative connotation and usually refers to the buying and selling of favors, the negotiation of votes in legislative bodies, the granting of benefits to organizations, etc.”

(RAE Dictionary and Nadler, Judy; Schulman, Miriam)

Guyana is being told that it is entering a new era: unprecedented wealth, modern infrastructure, expanded opportunity and national transformation. The promise is real. But so is the danger.

A country does not become developed merely because billions of United States dollars flow through its accounts, highways are commissioned, bridges are announced, and ministers cut ribbons before television cameras.

Development requires something more difficult: institutions that can withstand power, leaders who accept scrutiny, and citizens who refuse to exchange principle for political access.

Guyana’s central question is no longer whether oil will make the country richer. It is whether the country’s political culture will become more democratic, more transparent and more merit-based—or whether oil will finance the old vices on a scale never before possible.

The warning is plain: Guyana cannot build a new republic with the moral habits of the old political order.

 “Oil wealth does not erase political corruption, cronyism or authoritarian instincts. It gives them more money, more reach and more reasons to survive.”

The Cult of Political Performance

A troubling form of digital populism is taking root. Political leaders and their defenders increasingly operate as though public performance is a substitute for public accountability.

Every visit becomes a photo opportunity. Every promise becomes a social-media production. Every criticism is met with an online army of defenders, insults, selective statistics and accusations of disloyalty. Ministers appear permanently in campaign mode, displaying projects before the public has been allowed to examine costs, contracts, environmental implications, procurement procedures or long-term maintenance obligations.

This is not transparency. It is political marketing.

The governing PPP-C has become highly skilled at presenting visible development as conclusive proof of good governance. Roads, schools, hospitals, housing schemes and cash-grant announcements are repeatedly used to create an atmosphere in which citizens are expected to applaud first and ask questions later.

But a ribbon-cutting is not an audit. A Facebook video is not a procurement report. A ministerial announcement is not public consultation. And a glossy image of “transformation” does not answer whether taxpayers received value for money.

The opposition, meanwhile, cannot claim the moral high ground merely by criticizing the government’s excesses. It must also demonstrate that it has abandoned the patronage, racial mobilization, opaque decision-making and personality-driven politics that have damaged Guyana for generations.

“A government should be judged not by how often it appears before cameras, but by whether its decisions survive independent scrutiny.”

The Patronage State Is Expanding

The greatest threat to Guyana’s democratic future is not simply corruption in its crude and illegal form. It is the normalization of a patronage State: a system in which contracts, employment, land, licenses, boards, concessions, promotions and access to opportunity are perceived to depend on proximity to political power.

Guyana has long suffered from the corrosive belief that advancement depends not primarily on competence, but on connections—party connection, family connection, business connection, ethnic connection or personal connection.

Oil wealth has intensified the stakes.

The State now has access to unprecedented revenue, and with it, unprecedented capacity to reward loyalty and punish dissent. Major infrastructure contracts, public-sector employment, regional projects, land distribution, housing allocation, local-content opportunities, State boards and public procurement have become areas in which transparency must be non-negotiable.

Yet the public too often receives announcements rather than full disclosure; assurances rather than independently verifiable documentation; and political explanations rather than answers to basic questions.

Who received the contract? Who else bid? What was the evaluation criteria? What are the beneficial owners of the successful companies? What changes were made to the contract after award? Is there a conflict of interest? Has the project remained within budget? Who will be held responsible if it fails?

Those are not opposition questions. They are public questions.

“When citizens must know someone before they can receive fair treatment from the State, citizenship has been replaced by political dependency.”

The Merit Deficit

The problem is not that Guyana lacks qualified people. Guyana has capable public servants, engineers, economists, lawyers, teachers, health professionals, energy specialists, environmental experts and young people with the ability to build a modern State.

The problem is that too often, competence competes with loyalty—and loyalty wins.

Appointments to boards, agencies, diplomatic posts, public corporations, commissions and senior administrative positions must not become rewards for party service, personal allegiance or political convenience.                                                                                   Public offices cannot be treated as extensions of party headquarters.

A government that claims to be modernizing Guyana must be willing to modernize how it selects and evaluates public officials. It must publish criteria for major appointments, protect professional public servants, require declarations of interest, disclose qualifications, enforce ethical standards and remove persons who fail—not merely shield them because they are politically useful.

The same standard applies to the opposition and to civil society. The country cannot condemn cronyism in government while practicing it internally. It cannot demand ethical leadership while promoting individuals whose record consists of abuse, racial provocation, political opportunism or unverified self-promotion.

 “A title, party jersey, online following or proximity to power is not a qualification for public office.”

Haste Is Not a Development Plan

The administration often presents speed as proof of competence. Guyana, it says, cannot wait. The country must build now, spend now, expand now and seize the moment.

There is truth in the urgency. Guyana has enormous infrastructure deficits and generations of neglect to overcome. But urgency is not a license for opacity, weak planning or poor oversight

The faster the money is spent, the more carefully the public must examine how it is spent.

Major projects demand published feasibility studies, credible environmental assessments, procurement transparency, clear cost estimates, maintenance plans, independent technical review and meaningful consultation with the communities affected.

They require Parliament to function as a serious forum of oversight, not as a stage for predictable partisan warfare.

This is especially true in the oil sector, where decisions affecting the Natural Resource Fund, petroleum contracts, gas-to-energy arrangements, local-content policy, environmental liability, flaring, offshore safety and the terms under which Guyana’s resources are extracted will define national sovereignty for decades.

A country that rushes into commitments without adequate public scrutiny may discover too late that it has traded long-term national control for short-term political applause.

“A project is not successful because it is announced quickly. It is successful when it is necessary, lawful, affordable, transparent and durable.”

The “Ends Justify the Means” Trap

Perhaps the most dangerous argument in Guyana today is that criticism should be muted because development is taking place.

Do not question too much, citizens are told. Do not demand too much disclosure. Do not make noise. Do not challenge the government while roads are being built, jobs are being created and money is being distributed.

That mentality is the beginning of democratic decline.

A government can build infrastructure and still undermine accountability. It can distribute cash grants and still politicize public resources. It can speak of inclusion while concentrating decision-making among a narrow circle. It can invoke national development while treating criticism as sabotage.

No national project is so important that it must be protected from public examination. No party is so indispensable that it should be exempt from ethical standards. No leader is so effective that citizens should surrender their right to demand answers.

The end does not justify the means—not in a democracy, and certainly not in an oil-rich country where the means involve billions belonging to present and future generations.

“When accountability becomes inconvenient, power begins to confuse itself with the nation.”

Guyana’s Venezuela Warning

Guyana is not Venezuela, and it should not be casually compared to Venezuela. The histories, institutions and political conditions are different.

But there is a warning in every country that allows political power to become permanent, public opportunity to become partisan property, criticism to become an act of hostility, and citizens to become dependent on the goodwill of those in office.

Democratic decline rarely arrives with one dramatic declaration. It emerges through small accommodations: the contract that cannot be questioned, the appointment that cannot be challenged, the critic who is isolated, the reporter who is denied information, the public servant who is sidelined, the procurement process that remains hidden, the law that is selectively enforced, and the citizen who stays silent because they need a job, a house lot, a contract or a favor.

Guyana is at a crossroads. Its oil wealth can fund strong schools, modern hospitals, resilient communities, reliable electricity, national connectivity, economic diversification and a genuinely fairer society.

Or it can finance a more sophisticated version of the country’s oldest failures: political tribalism, dependency, secrecy, cronyism and unaccountable executive power.

“The question is not whether Guyana has money. The question is whether it has the courage to build institutions stronger than the people temporarily controlling that money.”

Guyana deserves more than a richer version of the past.

It deserves a republic in which public office is earned through competence, public funds are protected by transparency, national assets are managed for all citizens, and no political party—regardless of its achievements—can place itself above scrutiny.

The choice is being made now, contract by contract, appointment by appointment, project by project, silence by silence.

 

Eusi Kwayana: A Great Son of Guyana Returns to the Ancestors

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Eusi Kwayana: A Great Son of Guyana Returns to the Ancestors

SPECIAL FEATURE – October 2026

A tribute to a life of conscience, courage and service. We join the nation in celebrating the life, work and enduring legacy of our brother and friend, Eusi Kwayana.

There are some lives so deeply woven into the life of a nation that their passing leaves more than grief. It leaves a silence where a steady voice once stood—a voice that challenged, counselled, comforted and refused to surrender its convictions.

Eusi Kwayana was such a voice.

The Working People’s Alliance has announced the passing of the man generations knew as the Sage of Buxton, joining his family in mourning an elder, teacher, mentor and leader. At 101 years and six months, his long earthly journey has ended. Guyana must now reckon with the loss of one of its greatest sons: a man whose life helped shape its political awakening and whose example asked its people to consider not only what freedom promised, but whom it must serve.

His was a life of “conscience”

In its tribute, the WPA described Kwayana as a protector of the vulnerable and an advocate for the powerless. Those words reach beyond the offices he held and the organizations he helped build. They speak to the moral purpose of his public life: the conviction that people pushed to the margins still belonged at the center of the national concern.

A life woven into Guyana’s struggle

The story of Eusi Kwayana cannot be confined to one party, one period or one political allegiance.

As the WPA’s announcement recounts, he served in the original People’s Progressive Party, holding parliamentary and Cabinet responsibilities in the 1953 government. He also served as Assistant General Secretary of the PPP and later as General Secretary of the People’s National Congress, where he edited the party’s newspaper, New Nation.

In 1974, he helped found the Working People’s Alliance. He remained a member until his death, serving as an executive member, parliamentarian, organizer and guiding presence in its publications, Open Word and Dayclean.

Across that long journey, the distinction worth remembering is not simply the breadth of his political involvement. It is the independence the WPA itself honors in its farewell: his ability to remain loyal without abandoning his integrity or surrendering his judgment.

That is a demanding standard. It asks a person to belong without becoming captive, to work with others without allowing the organization to replace the conscience.For those who inherit his example, it is also an enduring challenge

Dignity, identity and service 

Kwayana’s work extended beyond party politics.

The WPA’s account recalls his leadership in land settlement, agricultural marketing, cooperative insurance and cooperative banking initiatives. These responsibilities placed him within the practical work of building a country—work focused  with how people might obtain opportunity, organize their resources and participate in national life.

His cultural commitments were equally significant. He co-founded the African Society for Racial Equality in 1961 and the African Society for Cultural Relations with Independent Africa in 1964, advancing African Guyanese cultural consciousness, pride and dignity.

Born Sydney King, he took the name Eusi Kwayana, which the WPA renders as “Black Man of Guyana.”

In remembering that name, we remember the dignity of a person defining himself, affirming his ancestry and declaring his belonging. His African identity and his Guyanese identity were not competing claims. In the life being honored today, they formed part of the same commitment to human worth.

The empty chair

The WPA writes that his death leaves “an empty chair in the gallery of our Guyanese humanity.”

It is an image worthy of the moment.

“An empty chair reminds us that something irreplaceable has gone: the presence, the memory, the counsel that could be sought from someone who had lived through so much of the country’s unfinished story. Yet a memorial must do more than place flowers beside that chair.”

To honor Kwayana is to take seriously the qualities his comrades remember: service without surrender of principle; cultural pride rooted in dignity; solidarity with those who possess little power; and the courage to think independently.

No life, however long, can complete a nation’s work. Those who follow must decide what to carry forward.

We mourn with his family, his comrades, his students and all who found wisdom or encouragement in his presence. We also give thanks that Guyana had him for so long.

Farewell, Eusi Kwayana.

Farewell, Sage of Buxton.

You have returned to the ancestors. The country you served must now find the courage to live up to the best of what you taught.

We join the nation in celebrating the life, work and enduring legacy of our brother and friend, Eusi Kwayana.

“This tribute draws on the WPA’s announcement and account of Kwayana’s life supplied above.”

Baba Eusi Kwayana

https://eusikwayanalegacy.com

 

Tier 1 Without the Proof: Guyana’s Trafficking Ranking Demands Disclosure

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

Tier 1 Without the Proof: Guyana’s Trafficking Ranking Demands Disclosure

Pres. Ali and Saju Bhaskar at the opening of EKAA HRIM – one of the most widely publicized TIP cases in Guyana , never made it into the report.

OPINION BY: Hem Kumar October 2026

Guyana’s Tier 1 designation should not be treated as a certificate of success. The report itself describes declining investigations, reduced anti-trafficking funding, shelter closures, weak recruitment oversight, unresolved forced-labor risks, and scant evidence of enforcement in high-risk extractive and foreign-financed worksites. A ranking without the underlying case, inspection, budget-execution, shelter-capacity and victim-outcome data asks the public to accept a conclusion it cannot independently verify.

The most significant issue is not that the report contains no data. It contains enough adverse data to raise serious doubt, while withholding the deeper data needed to explain why those adverse trends were nevertheless compatible with Tier 1.

Guyana has again been placed in Tier 1 in the United States’ 2026 Trafficking in Persons Report—a classification reserved for governments said to fully meet minimum standards for combating human trafficking. But the report’s own narrative raises a fundamental question: where is the hard data that allows the public to verify that conclusion?  

A Tier 1 label is not supposed to be public-relations currency. It should be the product of demonstrable performance: credible investigations, successful prosecutions, meaningful victim protection, effective labor oversight, transparent budgets, and verifiable outcomes in the sectors where trafficking risks are greatest.

Instead, the report records warning signs—fewer investigations, fewer victims identified, reduced funding, shelter closures, weak regulation of labor recruitment, unresolved forced-labor concerns, and no reported trafficking victims identified among Chinese workers despite acknowledged risks at China-linked worksites.

Yet Guyana remains Tier 1. The public deserves to know why.

The numbers do not speak for themselves

The report says Guyana initiated 16 trafficking investigations in 2025, down from 31 in 2024. That is nearly a 48 percent decline.

Victim identification also fell, from 416 persons in 2024 to 390 in 2025. In a country experiencing rapid oil-driven growth, substantial inward migration, expanding construction activity, remote mining operations, and increased demand for foreign labor, a fall in identification cannot simply be presented as progress.

More troubling is the protection data. The report says 390 victims were identified, but only 25 were referred to care. That gap requires a full public explanation.

Were the remaining 365 victims offered assistance and refused it? Were they deported, repatriated, released, lost to follow-up, or referred through channels not counted in the report? Did they receive medical treatment, shelter, counselling, legal aid, immigration help, work permits, or compensation? Or were they simply identified on paper and left outside the formal protection system?

Without those answers, the public cannot determine whether the state is actually protecting trafficking survivors or merely producing a headline figure.

Budgets were cut, shelters reportedly closed

The report also records decreases in the funding allocated for both victim protection and prevention.

Protection funding fell from GYD 132.6 million in 2024 to GYD 116.9 million in 2025. Prevention funding reportedly fell from GYD 169.5 million to GYD 83.25 million—more than a halving of the previous year’s allocation.

At the same time, non-governmental organizations reportedly said some shelters were closed in 2025. This is an extraordinary concern. A transition home may have been completed, but one new facility cannot automatically substitute for shelter capacity lost elsewhere—especially in a country where victims may be located in distant interior communities, mining districts, border areas, and urban centers.

The issue is not merely how much money was allocated. The issue is how much was actually spent, on what services, in which regions, for how many victims, and with what results.

An allocation is not an outcome.

Forced-labor risks cannot be managed by silence

The report identifies serious forced-labor risks among workers connected to Chinese state-affiliated projects, China-based mining companies, and Cuban state-linked employment arrangements. It acknowledges that Chinese workers may face conditions indicative of forced labor and that the government did not adequately address trafficking risks in China-affiliated worksites.

Yet the report supplies no meaningful inspection data.

How many Chinese-linked worksites were inspected? How many Chinese workers were privately interviewed without managers, recruiters, interpreters, state officials, or supervisors present? How many employment contracts were reviewed? How many workers had possession of their passports? How many were paid directly? How many complained of recruitment debt, withheld wages, contract substitution, restricted movement, threats, intimidation, or retaliation?

The report says no trafficking victims were identified among Chinese workers. But without the details of the screening process, that statement is impossible to evaluate.

No victims found is not the same as no victims existing.

It may instead mean inspections were weak, interviews were not confidential, workers feared retaliation, language access was inadequate, or inspectors lacked the independence and expertise needed to detect forced labor.

Recruitment remains a glaring loophole

Guyana’s labor market is changing rapidly. Oil, construction, mining, services, infrastructure and related industries are attracting workers from across the region and beyond. In those circumstances, recruitment agencies and labor brokers should be subject to strict oversight.

Yet the report says Guyana still lacks laws prohibiting employers, recruiters and labor agents from charging workers recruitment fees, switching contracts without consent, or withholding wages to compel work. It also says the government has been reviewing recruitment legislation for four consecutive years without completing the reform.

That is not a minor legislative delay. It is a structural vulnerability.

Recruitment debt, deceptive job offers, contract substitution, wage withholding and document retention are well-known pathways into forced labor.

A government cannot credibly claim robust prevention while leaving the recruitment chain largely unregulated.

One conviction is not proof of success

Guyana recorded one trafficking conviction in 2025—the same number as the previous year.

One conviction may be important to the survivor involved. It may reflect real work by police, prosecutors and support personnel. But it cannot, by itself, demonstrate that the national anti-trafficking system is functioning effectively.

The report itself identifies a slow judicial process, limited government presence in the interior, inadequate monitoring in high-risk areas, and a legal requirement for victim testimony that can lead to prosecutions being dropped when survivors decline to testify.

These are not signs of a fully reliable accountability system. They are indicators of a system that still depends heavily on traumatized victims carrying the burden of prosecution, even where the state should be capable of building cases through financial records, phone data, recruitment documents, travel records, payrolls, witness testimony, digital evidence and worksite inspections.

The reported settlement of a labor-trafficking case is especially troubling. If evidence supported a trafficking charge, why was the matter resolved by directing payment of unpaid wages and transportation home rather than pursuing a criminal case?

Wage recovery is necessary, but it is not a substitute for accountability where coercion and exploitation may amount to forced labor.

The questions Guyana must answer

The Government of Guyana, the Ministerial Task Force on Trafficking in Persons, the Guyana Police Force, the Ministry of Labor and Manpower Planning, the Director of Public Prosecutions, and the U.S. State Department should answer the following questions publicly and with documents.

On the Tier 1 decision

1. What objective criteria, benchmarks and evidence were used to conclude that Guyana fully meets the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking?

2. What specific improvements outweighed the decline in investigations, victim identification, protection funding and prevention funding?

3. Did the assessment include any formal risk analysis of oil-sector growth, mining expansion, labor migration, major infrastructure projects and cross-border recruitment?

4. What conditions, if any, would have caused Guyana to be placed on Tier 1 Watch List or downgraded to Tier 2?

On investigations and prosecutions

5. Of the 16 investigations initiated in 2025, how many remain active, how many were closed, how many led to charges, and how many were referred for prosecution?

6. How many trafficking suspects were arrested, granted bail, remanded, convicted, acquitted, discharged, or remain before the courts?

7. How many prosecutions were withdrawn or discontinued because victims declined, could not safely testify, were repatriated, disappeared, or could not be located?

8. How many trafficking cases have been pending for more than one year, two years, three years and four years?

9. What was the full factual basis for the labor-trafficking case settled through payment of wages and transportation, and why was criminal prosecution not pursued to conclusion?

10. How many assets were restrained, forfeited or recovered from alleged traffickers in 2025?

On victims and services

11. Why were only 25 of 390 identified victims referred to care?

12. What services were provided to each category of victim: shelter, food, health care, counselling, legal support, immigration assistance, interpreters, education, employment support, repatriation and long-term reintegration?

13. How many identified victims declined assistance, and what reasons did they give?

14. How many victims were housed in state-run, NGO-operated and private facilities?

15. Which shelters closed in 2025, where were they located, what was their capacity, and what services replaced them?

16. How many victims were unable to obtain shelter because no bed, safe location, transport or specialized service was available?

17. How much of the GYD 116.9 million allocated for victim protection was actually spent, and which agencies or organizations received it?

18.How much restitution was ordered, paid, outstanding or enforced in trafficking cases?

On labour recruitment and inspection

19. How many recruitment agencies, placement services and labor brokers currently operate in Guyana.?

20.How many are registered, licensed, inspected, sanctioned, suspended or prosecuted?

21. How many workers reported paying recruitment fees, being charged for job placement, having their contracts changed, losing access to their passports, or having wages withheld?

22. When will Guyana enact enforceable laws prohibiting worker-paid recruitment fees, contract substitution and wage withholding as coercive practices?

23. What agency is responsible for monitoring recruiters before workers are placed in mines, construction sites, hotels, domestic work, agriculture, forestry and oil-related employment?

On high-risk foreign workforces

24. How many inspections were conducted at Chinese-owned, Chinese state-affiliated or Belt and Road-linked worksites?

25. How many Chinese workers were interviewed privately, in a language they understood, without their employer, recruiter, interpreter or supervisor present?

26. How many workers were screened for recruitment debt, passport retention, contract substitution, wage withholding, restricted movement, threats and coercion?

27. How many Cuban workers remained in Guyana after the bilateral health agreement ended, and how many received direct employment, work permits, full wages, independent accommodation and protection?

28. How many complaints were received from Cuban workers, and how many were investigated?

29. What safeguards are now in place to prevent foreign-government employment arrangements from concealing forced-labor conditions?

On the interior and mining areas

30. How many anti-trafficking operations, inspections and victim screenings were conducted in Regions 1, 7, 8 and 9?

31. How many mines, bars, hotels, shops, camps and transportation routes in interior communities were inspected?

32. How many trained officers, labor inspectors, social workers and interpreters are stationed in high-risk interior regions?

33. How does the government ensure that hotline services function where cellular coverage is poor or unavailable?

34. How many reports from the hotlines resulted in an investigation, rescue, victim identification, referral or prosecution?

Disclosure must replace ceremony

Guyana should not be asked to reject a favorable international ranking. But neither should the Government be allowed to celebrate a Tier 1 label without producing the evidence needed to sustain it.

The country needs a public anti-trafficking performance dashboard, updated at least quarterly, showing investigations, arrests, prosecutions, convictions, pending cases, victims identified, victims receiving services, shelter capacity, inspections, recruitment-agency enforcement, hotline outcomes, restitution orders, budget allocations and actual expenditure.

It should be broken down by region, nationality, gender, age, trafficking type, sector and case status—while protecting the identities and safety of survivors.

Until that happens, Tier 1 risks becoming a badge without an audit trail: a diplomatic endorsement unsupported by the level of transparency that trafficking survivors, vulnerable workers and the Guyanese public deserve.

 

The Dangers  of Silence on Domestic Violence : What Are They Afraid Of?

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

 The Dangers  of Silence on Domestic Violence : What Are They Afraid Of?

OPINION BY : Hem Kumar October 2026 

The Daniel Seeram matter has moved far beyond the boundaries of one criminal case. It has become a national test of whether Guyana’s institutions mean what they say when they speak about domestic violence, women’s protection, justice and the rule of law.,

A woman reported that she was assaulted. The matter went before the court. Evidence was heard. A Magistrate found Daniel Seeram guilty of assault causing actual bodily harm to his former wife and remanded him pending sentencing. His subsequent challenge to that remand order was rejected by the High Court. The court has spoken.

Yet Seeram has not presented himself to face the consequence of that conviction. He remains free, while the country is left without a clear official explanation of his custodial status, the authority under which he remains at liberty, or what steps are being taken to enforce the orders of the court.

But perhaps the most deafening feature of this entire disgrace is not only the apparent failure of custody. It is the silence of the women and institutions that have repeatedly claimed to stand at the frontline of the national fight against domestic violence. 

Where is the Minister of Human Services?

Where is the Minister of Home Affairs—herself an attorney and a woman, with responsibility for the agencies whose cooperation is essential to the enforcement of court orders and lawful custody?

Where is the leadership of the Guyana Police Force? Where is the Guyana Prison Service? Where is the Chancellor and the institutional leadership of the judiciary? Where are the women’s legal associations, women-centered civil-society organizations, survivor advocates, and the international partners and donor agencies that have financed campaigns, workshops, policy papers and programs on gender-based violence?

Where is women’s power when a woman who sought protection through the legal system is left to watch a conviction apparently lose its force in the open?

No one is asking any institution to interfere with a pending legal process. No one is asking them to decide Seeram’s guilt; the Magistrate has already done so. No one is asking them to dictate a sentence; that remains a matter for the court.

They are being asked to stand for justice.

They are being asked to say that a remand order is not optional. They are being asked to insist that a convicted man cannot remain outside custody without a transparent, lawful explanation. They are being asked to recognize that justice for survivors does not begin and end with workshops, press releases, orange ribbons, televised speeches and ceremonial declarations during observance months.

Justice is tested in the hard cases—when the accused is influential, politically connected, employed by the state, or useful to the powerful.

That is where the real courage lies.

A country cannot claim to be confronting domestic violence while becoming mute when a survivor’s case reaches the point of consequence. It cannot lecture women about reporting abuse, coming forward, trusting the police, trusting the courts and using the mechanisms established for their protection—then stand silent when the system appears to falter after a conviction is secured.

What are women who are presently enduring violence expected to conclude from this spectacle? What should a woman contemplating a police report believe when she watches a convicted state official remain unaccounted for, apparently beyond the ordinary reach of custody? What assurance can be offered to a survivor who has been told, repeatedly, that the law will protect her?

The message, unless decisively corrected, is brutal: report the violence, endure the investigation, relive the trauma in court, wait through delay and public scrutiny—then watch power, access and official silence make accountability negotiable.

That is not protection. That is abandonment.

The failure to publicly demand clarity is not neutrality. Silence in the face of apparent unequal treatment carries its own meaning. It tells survivors that their pain becomes inconvenient when it collides with political relationships. It tells ordinary women that the systems celebrated in glossy reports and grand presentations may operate differently when the alleged perpetrator is connected to the machinery of state.

This is why the silence is such a shameful indictment. Every ribbon-cutting ceremony, every donor-funded initiative, every ministerial address and every declaration of concern for women’s safety is hollow if institutions cannot summon the moral strength to stand with one victim when it matters most.

There can be no serious national campaign against domestic violence without a serious national commitment to consequences. And consequences cannot depend on party colours, proximity to the executive, title, rank, or usefulness to those in power.

The hard question, therefore, must be asked: What are they afraid of?

The court has adjudicated. The law has provided its direction. The state institutions and advocacy bodies now need not invent justice; they need only defend it. If they cannot stand publicly for the enforcement of a lawful court order in a case involving violence against a woman, then their silence will be remembered not as caution, but as complicity

Editor’s Note: The Precedent We Are Creating

The precedent being set by this unfolding matter is not confined to one victim, one convicted man, or one court order. It reflects a nation increasingly rich in promises but dangerously poor in deliverance

For years, women have been urged to report abuse, seek protection, trust the police, use the courts, engage support agencies and believe that the system will stand with them. But what happens when a woman does exactly that—when she endures the reporting process, the scrutiny, the trauma of a trial, and ultimately secures a conviction—only for the public to be left asking whether the convicted person has submitted to the custody ordered by the court?

What lesson are young women meant to draw from this?

A girl watching this spectacle may conclude that abuse is simply something to endure. She may decide that seeking shelter in the institutions designed to protect her is useless—like a bite without teeth. She may learn, long before she should, that speaking up brings exposure and pain, while influence and connection may soften the consequences for the person who hurt her.

That is a dangerous national lesson to teach.

It risks cultivating a culture in which women resign themselves to violence as an unavoidable condition of life, rather than seeing it as a wrong that the state is duty-bound to confront. It also sends an equally destructive message to young men: that violence against women can be rationalized, minimized, delayed, negotiated, or insulated from consequence when one has the right access, the right friends, or the right political value.

Guyana already confronts a deeply troubling reality in which too many complaints by victims of domestic violence are met with delay, disbelief, indifference or inaction. If this episode is allowed to pass without clarity and accountability, it will deepen that existing culture. It may encourage police officers—consciously or otherwise—to begin making their own judgments about which women deserve urgent protection, which complaints are worth pursuing, and which alleged perpetrators are too connected to be treated like everybody else.

That is how lawlessness enters a system: not always through a public instruction, but through the quiet growth of a laissez-faire attitude. A report is not taken seriously. A complaint is put aside. An officer chooses convenience over duty. A victim is told to go home and “work it out.” A powerful man is given time, comfort, access and accommodation that would never be extended to the ordinary citizen

Then the law becomes unequal long before it reaches a courtroom.

The national consequence is severe. A country cannot build a genuine culture of protection for women while allowing visible uncertainty around the enforcement of orders in a domestic-violence case involving a connected official.

It cannot spend public funds and donor resources on campaigns against gender-based violence, then fail to demonstrate that a woman’s right to justice survives beyond the moment she gives testimony.

Justice must not be a performance staged for observance months, donor reports, ribbon cuttings and official speeches. It must have force when it is inconvenient. It must mean something when the accused is powerful. And it must be visible enough for every young woman in Guyana to know that if she seeks help, the law will not abandon her at the moment accountability is supposed to begin.

 

DC Karimbaksk should have left on his own

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

DC Karimbaksk should have left on his own

OPINION BY: GHK LALL- October 2026

The official word is that Deputy Comm of Police, Mr. Karimbaksh has been sent on leave.  A positive development, after what had to be severe turbulences inside the Guyana Police Command structure and, more importantly, the highest PPP Govt offices.  To send one man off is to take a risk.  Like senior politicians linked to a major ferry boat tragedy, so senior police officers named in an alleged felony, there’s risk.  Because they know so much, could reveal much.  It must never be seen as though the PPP Govt, having used these men, now abandons them to the wolves.

From the moment the allegation was leveled against him, the deputy commissioner had a choice.  Shelter in place, or leave on his own.  He made the wrong choice when he chose the former.  What a statement it would have made, without a word said, that a man under siege took a step towards higher ground.  He left the battlefield to his accuser and pursuers.  In staying, he may have made a consequential blunder.  I say this publicly, while going on the assumption of Comm Karimbaksh’s innocence.  He is entitled.  I deliver it to him.  Notwithstanding the power of noise that threatens to overwhelm all peripheral sounds, and has actually succeeded to a point.  Notwithstanding my own uncertainties.  I did it for Nigel Dharmalall, for Bharrat Jagdeo, for others of lesser nobility in the PPP aristocracy.  There’s appreciation that in today’s Guyana, these positions are virtually valueless.  I still believe in them, offer them, nevertheless.

It’s that there’s someone who will stand for the way that things ought to be, even when there’s anguish of how they are.  If I can still call Guyana’s president by name in dealing with national issues, it’s a lesser challenge to lobby that Mr. Karimbaksh is due all rights due to every Guyanese.  Unfortunately, this is PPP Guyana, so there isn’t much of a premium on that, beyond the traditional lip service.  In doing so, I am thinking of a victim in pain, one allegedly besmirched.  But I must also think of a senior police officer whose life just imploded, and in the worst public way. 

I hope that both parties to what is hurtful can emerge from their respective ordeals in one piece.  Some soul-searching, some self-adjustments, maybe even some self-corrections, where such are due.

In the wider national frame, the wish is that some lessons were learned.  By commissioner.  By minister.  By PPP Govt problem solvers.  By PPP Govt concealers.  The first step shouldn’t be erecting barricades.  The second shouldn’t be to see those seeking truth’s clarity, and sunlight’s frankness as enemies.  If for every alleged crime, all that’s seen are those bent on upturning the PPP applecart, then defensive coverup and a wall of silence are going to rule the way that Guyana exists, and dominate the standards that prevail.  Maybe the PPP applecart is too loaded.

When the commissioner of police silences himself, the long arm of the law is effectively reduced to operating with that arm winched to the back.  Seems like another expensive salvage operation may be necessary.  One of the principals in an alleged felony is a deputy commissioner not a deputy lance corporal.  The other is the weaker party in a power dynamic that has been the loser before antiquity. 

Thus, it is now beyond policies, procedures, and practices.  It is about a person.  Frankly, two of them now trapped in a cauldron at overheated temps and beyond their control.

The victim took a chance, trusted the system.  Maybe even trusted all that Excellency Ali spoke so lushly about, in the essence of one word.  Accountability.  The president attracts the odor of flimsy words.  The watchdogs, the safeguards, have an obligation to deliver works.  Works that attest to justice, however that pans out.  Empty words are given muscle by genuine works that lookout for Guyana’s weaker.  Or, Guyana’s wrongly accused.

Now, Comm Karimbaksh has left on forced leave.  I wish he had left on his own power, of his own volition, and confidence in the strength of his own position.

Rule of Law Abroad, Selective Justice at Home

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

 Rule of Law Abroad, Selective Justice at Home

OPINION BY: Hem Kumar October 2026

Minister Kwame McCoy’s assurances to the Inter-Parliamentary Union demand an immediate domestic answer: was a court-ordered remand enforced, and where is Daniel Seeram? McCoy’s Speech Cannot Conceal a Government of Double Standards.

 Minister Kwame McCoy went to Arusha, Tanzania, to tell the Inter-Parliamentary Union that Guyana is committed to human rights, democratic governance, accountability and the rule of law. At home, however, the Government faces a far more basic test: whether court orders, public institutions and ordinary citizens receive the same respect when politically connected people are involved.

McCoy declared that human rights and democracy are not “abstract principles confined to international declarations.” The problem is that, under this administration, those principles too often appear to become abstract the moment they demand accountability from the powerful.

The speech in Tanzania was polished. The record at home is not. 

Where Is Daniel Seeram?

The immediate and unavoidable question is: Where is Daniel Seeram?Seeram, the National Border Patrol Director and former Region Four Chairman, was reportedly convicted on October 2 of assault causing actual bodily harm against his former wife. Magistrate Abigail Gibbs remanded him pending sentencing, and Justice Joy Persaud-Singh subsequently upheld the remand order after he sought relief in the High Court.

Yet reports indicate that Seeram was not transferred into the custody of the Guyana Prison Service, despite the court order. Officials at Lusignan and Georgetown prisons reportedly said he was not being held at those facilities, while the Acting Director of Prisons reportedly declined to provide a public explanation.

This is not gossip. It is a direct challenge to the credibility of the criminal-justice system.

If a magistrate orders a man remanded and the High Court sustains that order, the public is entitled to know whether it was carried out, where the prisoner is being lawfully held, which agency has custody, and who authorized any departure from the normal process. The Government cannot preach “access to justice” in Tanzania while refusing, or failing, to provide transparent answers in Guyana.[1]

A rule-of-law government would have answered the country immediately: “Where is Daniel Seeram, and why is he not clearly accounted for in the prison system?”

Law for Some, Latitude for Others

McCoy praised Guyana’s judiciary, Audit Office, Ombudsman, Rights Commissions and Elections Commission as institutions that secure transparency and accountability.[

But institutions do not defend democracy simply because ministers mention them in international speeches. They defend democracy when their rulings are obeyed, their authority is protected, their findings trigger consequences, and political connections do not produce a separate standard of treatment.

For the poor, the unknown and the unconnected, remand is no academic question. It means police custody, prison processing, court dates and the harsh machinery of the State moving with unforgiving speed. But when a senior official with access to power is reportedly absent from the prisons to which he should have been committed, Guyanese are entitled to ask whether there are two systems of justice: one for ordinary citizens and another for those who enjoy official favor.

That perception is corrosive because it is rooted in a plainly answerable fact. The State has the records. The police know who has custody. The Prison Service knows who has been received. The Government has the capacity to settle the matter in one clear statement.

Its silence is not neutrality. It is an injury to public confidence.

Human Rights Begin at Home

The minister spoke of gender equality, the protection of vulnerable groups and access to legal protection.  But those declarations ring hollow when the case raising questions involves a woman whose former husband has been convicted of assaulting her.

What message does this send to women who report domestic violence? What confidence should survivors have in the justice system if a person convicted of assaulting his former wife can become the subject of public uncertainty over whether a remand order has been enforced?

A government genuinely committed to protecting women would not treat this as an inconvenience in the news cycle. It would ensure that the court’s order is transparently executed, the survivor is treated with dignity, and the public understands that official status is not a shield from legal consequences.

Human rights are not vindicated through carefully selected phrases in foreign conference rooms. They are vindicated when a woman can report abuse without fear, obtain justice without political interference, and see that the law applies equally to the person who harmed her.

The Democratic Test

Guyana’s Government wants credit for supporting 146 recommendations during its 2025 Universal Periodic Review, including recommendations touching democratic governance, gender equality, social inclusion and legal protection.

Fine. But accepting recommendations is not the same as implementing them. International commitments are not trophies to be displayed; they are obligations to be honored.

Freedom House’s 2025 assessment cited continuing problems involving corruption, police brutality, discrimination and intimidation of journalists, and gave Guyana only 2 out of 4 for whether due process prevails in civil and criminal matters.  The U.S. State Department’s 2024 human-rights report also identified credible reports of serious human-rights concerns in Guyana.

Those assessments should not be brushed aside as hostile commentary. They should compel a Government that claims to welcome scrutiny to confront weaknesses honestly, correct them, and allow institutions to operate without political manipulation.

Instead, Guyanese are repeatedly asked to accept speeches as proof of governance while troubling facts go unanswered.

No More International Theatre

Minister McCoy said Parliament must enable public participation and scrutiny of executive action.  Then Parliament, the responsible ministers and the relevant agencies must answer the questions now before the country.

♦ Where is Daniel Seeram?

♦ Is he in lawful custody pursuant to the remand order?

♦  If not, who authorised his release, transfer or special treatment?

♦ Why has the Prison Service not provided an unequivocal public account?

♦ What safeguards exist to ensure that persons with political or official connections do not receive treatment unavailable to ordinary Guyanese?

♦ What protection and support have been extended to the complainant in this matter?

These are not partisan questions. They are questions demanded by the rule of law.

The Government cannot go to Tanzania to lecture the world about transparency, accountability and democratic values while leaving Guyanese to chase basic answers about whether a court order has been respected. It cannot invoke the dignity of citizens abroad while creating the impression at home that dignity, justice and equal protection depend on who one knows.

The 592 Guardian rejects this crass duplicity.

The rule of law is not a diplomatic talking point. It is not a shield for the connected and a weapon against the powerless. It either applies to everyone—or it is not the rule of law at all.