A Generation Introduces Itself With Silence

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ♦ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM ♦ GUYANA

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

A Generation Introduces Itself with Silence

What We Saw Outside the Office of the President — and Why It May Outlast the Ministers Who Ignore It

By Hem Kumar, Editor

I have covered Guyanese politics long enough to know the difference between a crowd that has been organized and a crowd that has organized itself.

What gathered outside the Office of the President this past week belonged unmistakably to the second category. They did not arrive under a party banner. They did not chant the slogans of any of the coalitions that have spent the last two weeks fighting over the wreckage of the MV Barima.

They arrived under a name of their own choosing — We The People — in white T-shirts they had bought with their own limited means, to stand in solidarity with the Amerindian Peoples Association’s continuing action, and then, deliberately, to stand apart from it as well.

Listening to live feeds  with representatives of the group this is what I can deduce .

They did not give us a press release  or a spokesperson’s card; what they showed us  was a banner, five feet of red, green, gold and black, printed with a demand rather than a grievance: “We The People Demand — Ministerial Accountability — Edghill Must Resign.” Their message was bold and stated plainly:  this was not a political party’s operation, and no political party paid for it.

No one incurs an expense they can barely afford to stage a performance nobody asked for.

I want to be careful here, in the way this publication  has tried to be careful with every claim it has made about the Barima disaster since July 18. My own notes from that afternoon are a corraborated  account, not a transcript — we did not take names or recorded interviews off of social media .

What I offer first is my own judgment as an editor who has watched this country’s protest movements rise and dissolve for decades: these were young people, largely surviving on stipends and family support, who chose to spend what little they have on a shirt and an afternoon in the sun outside a government building. That is not the behavior of people staging a show for an audience. It is the behavior of people who have run out of patience with the alternative — waiting.

A MOVEMENT INTRODUCES ITSELF

What We The People represents is still, by its own account, less than two weeks old. It is, on the record now, more precisely described than I could offer from memory alone. Kisskadee Watch, reporting on the same demonstration, identified the protesters as drawn largely from the University of Guyana, gathered in solemn silence outside the Office of the President, holding placards and observing moments of silence for the seventy-three confirmed dead. That reporting confirms what we saw: this was not a chanting crowd or a rally in the mode of the Joint Opposition’s July 27 walk-in. It was quiet, deliberate, and unmistakably generational in its composition.

The same reporting adds a detail this publication thinks is important to state precisely, rather than round off into a cleaner story than the facts support. Organisers maintained that the protest was independent and non-partisan — and I have no reason to doubt that framing was sincerely held.

But members of the We Invest in Nationhood party and A Partnership for National Unity were present in support, alongside members of civil society. That is not a contradiction. A movement can hold its own identity, set its own terms, and still draw solidarity from people who arrive under other banners without becoming those banners.

What matters is who called the protest, who wrote the placards, and who is committing to return — and on all three counts, the record points to the students, not the parties standing behind them.

One of the organisers, Chandradatt Jagdeo, put his own name to a public accounting of the turnout on Facebook afterward: a movement “not even 2 weeks old,” he wrote, “NOT sponsored by any Political party,” that brought “hundreds, 300+ (I did not do a head count) people out.

I record that figure as his claim, made publicly and under his own name, corraborated independently by other attendees describing the same afternoon in the same terms — not as this publication’s own verified count. That distinction matters to me more than the number does.

A movement that can produce a named organiser willing to put a figure on the record, and independent attendees willing to describe the same event unprompted, has already cleared a bar that a great many protest claims in this country’s history have not.

WHY THIS MATTERS MORE THAN A SINGLE PICKET

Guyana has no shortage of protest. The Joint Opposition marched into the National Assembly in black on July 27. The Amerindian Peoples Association has picketed the Office of the President twice in the same week, led by Executive Director Jean La Rose, demanding accountability for communities in Region One that absorbed the disaster’s heaviest losses. Families of the accused T&HD crew have taken to the Den Amstel and Melanie public roads. Every one of these actions has been, in its own register, legitimate.

What distinguishes We The People is that it belongs to none of them.  It is not the opposition’s protest, dressed in the opposition’s colors, chanting the opposition’s slogans of “who must go.” It is not a union action, not a party rally repackaged as civil society, not a demonstration organized by anyone who stood to gain a seat, a ministry, or a headline from it.

It is, on the evidence before me, a generation that watched its government’s handling of a mass-casualty maritime disaster — the shifting timeline on what caused the sinking, the scrubbed commissioner biographies, the pre-drafted memorial-site declarations circulated to grieving families before any consultation had genuinely occurred — and concluded that the normal channels of Guyanese political life were not going to produce the answers it was owed.

That conclusion, if it holds, is the more significant story here. Political parties in Guyana have spent sixty years organizing along lines this news -media has documented at exhausting length.

A movement that explicitly refuses that architecture — that stands beside the APA’s action without folding into it, that borrows the opposition’s demand for Edghill’s resignation without borrowing the opposition’s identity — is doing something Guyanese civil society has rarely managed to sustain: building a constituency for accountability that neither the government nor its established opposition can claim as their own.

WHAT COMES NEXT

This is not intended as a single afternoon of catharsis. Organisers have described this as the first in a planned series of weekly demonstrations, with the next gathering set for the same location — outside the Office of the President — at 4:30 p.m. on Friday, August 7.

A movement that commits to a recurring date, in public, before it knows whether anyone will show up a second time, is making a claim about itself that either holds or collapses in full view. That is a more honest test than anything this paper could construct for it.

I do not know yet which this is. I am not going to promise our readers a Guyanese Spring, because that promise is not mine to make on behalf of people I saw for an afternoon.

What I can tell them is this: a generation that the political establishment has largely assumed to be disengaged showed up, on its own initiative, under its own name, to demand that a government answer for seventy-plus deaths in the manner a Westminster democracy requires of it.

Whether the Ali administration treats that as a passing irritation or as the leading edge of something it can no longer manage through press conferences and pre-drafted declarations will do more to shape the next decade of Guyanese governance than any single resignation anyone is currently calling  for.

This publication will be eagerly awaiting for August 7. Whether the government chooses to notice is, as ever, its own decision to make — and its own consequence to bear.

When a government treats a body count as a communications problem, it should not be surprised when the young decide that protest is the only language left that it understands.

— Hem Kumar, Editor

CHANGE OF VENUE & SOLIDARITY with MV BARIMA VICTIMS and SURVIVORS

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ♦ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM ♦GUYANA

PRESS RELEASE

“Enter the Political Kingdom” Book Launch

Saturday August 8th at 5.00 PM at the Georgetown Club

CHANGE OF VENUE & SOLIDARITY with MV BARIMA VICTIMS and SURVIVORS

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moses Bhagwan (Author)

Georgetown August 1st 2026

 

  

 

The Elite Capture Story: Long Creek, the Development Bank, and the Money Nobody Can Trace

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THE 592 GUARDIAN◊ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM◊ GUYANA

SMOKE AND FIRE — PART I OF III

The Elite Capture Story: Long Creek, the Development Bank, and the Money Nobody Can Trace

By Hem Kumar, Editor

Georgetown — August, 2026

This is the first of a three-part series examining Guyana’s oil-era governance through the lens of Bloomberg Opinion’s July 29, 2026 feature “Oil’s Resource Curse Hangs Heavy Over Guyana” by Juan Pablo Spinetto, read against The 592 Guardian’s own investigative record. Where Bloomberg’s reporting from Georgetown captured the outline of a pattern, this newsroom’s sourcing over the past several weeks fills it in. Attributed excerpts below are drawn from Spinetto’s published column; all further findings are the Guardian’s own unless otherwise sourced

Juan Pablo Spinetto spent a week in Georgetown and came away, in his words, “less optimistic” than when he arrived.

He interviewed the President. He toured the shanty dwellings of South Cummingsburg, blocks from the presidential palace. He watched dump trucks and excavators multiply against a skyline that still tops out at a dozen storeys. And he arrived, from the outside, at a question this newsroom has been answering from the inside for weeks: whether Guyana’s oil windfall is enriching a nation or a class.

The lingering question for many is how members of the political elite managed to amass such vast wealth in such a short time.

— JP Spinetto, Bloomberg Opinion, July 29, 2026

Spinetto’s column names the Long Creek matter directly, citing Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed’s allegation that President Irfaan Ali’s ownership of a 150-acre ranch south of Georgetown represents a conflict of interest, and recording the President’s defense — that the property was purchased before he took office and properly disclosed. Bloomberg reports the allegation and the denial and, constrained by the format of a single reporting trip, leaves it there.

WHAT THE RECORD ACTUALLY SHOWS

The Guardian’s own satellite polygon trace of the Long Creek property — conducted independently of any party’s public claims — measures approximately 155 acres under active use, against the sub-75-acre figure implied in the President’s own public accounting.

That is not a rounding error. It is more than double.

More significant is the paper trail. This news- media  has obtained and reviewed a duplicate 2011 State Lands lease — File No. 411123/688, Lease No. A 23480 — naming then-Finance-Minister-turned-Vice-President Bharrat Jagdeo as Lessor and a “Mohamed Ali,” holder of Guyanese passport number R028239, as Lessee, covering Lots 33 and 35 at Long Creek, a combined 20.338 acres per GL&SC Plan No. 50318. This new-media’s published findings, in “The Lease, the Name, and the Silence,” treat the existence and contents of that lease as verified fact. The identity question — whether “Mohamed Ali” on that 2011 instrument is the same individual now occupying the Office of the President — and the prior SARU investigation cited by APNU remain, and are treated by this publication as, unproven allegations pending further documentary corroboration.

That distinction matters, and it is the distinction Bloomberg’s column — writing at the level of political atmosphere rather than instrument-level record — was not positioned to draw. Spinetto’s piece captures the public argument. It does not, and could not from a week’s reporting trip, reach the lease.

THE SECOND FRONT: A BANK WITH NO GUARDRAILS

Bloomberg’s column mentions the new Guyana Development Bank in passing — “more than $200 million in initial funding to finance venture projects, including start-ups that require no collateral” — folded into President Ali’s account of a diversifying, “future-proofed” economy.

It is presented, in the column, as evidence of ambition.

It is broad. It is highly integrated, and it’s what I would say progressive.

— President Irfaan Ali to Bloomberg Opinion, on his economic diversification strategy

The Guyana Development Bank Bill, tabled by Finance Minister Ashni Singh on June 5, 2026, passed its second reading and received full passage on July 27 — the same sitting, this publication notes, in which Parliament passed a $54.9 billion appropriations bill and the Joint Opposition staged its walk-in protest over the MV Barima disaster.

The Development Bank Bill passed without debate.

This news-media’s review of the Bill’s text finds that the “interest-free, no collateral” pitch offered to the public sits alongside Section 5(2), which grants the Finance Minister discretionary authority over collateral and interest terms — a provision nowhere mentioned in the public framing Bloomberg’s column reproduces.

Section 23 imposes no Guyanese-citizenship eligibility requirement on borrowers.

The board appointment structure gives the Finance Minister sole discretion over the naming of all directors, with no reserved seats for opposition, civil society, or independent transparency nominees. The Bill’s offence provisions are written entirely toward borrower misconduct; there is no specific offence contemplated for insider self-dealing within a fund with an aggregate ceiling of up to $40 billion.

Bloomberg’s $200 million figure describes the Bank’s initial funding tranche. It is not in conflict with this newsroom’s reporting on the $40 billion structural ceiling — the two numbers describe different things, the seed capital versus the statutory maximum — but read together they illustrate exactly the gap this series exists to close: the modest, reassuring number offered abroad, and the uncapped discretionary architecture legislated at home.

A PATTERN, NOT AN INCIDENT

Michael L. Ross, the UCLA political scientist Spinetto quotes at length, offers the theoretical scaffolding for what this outlet has been reporting as a specific, documented case:

“These countries start with weak institutions and often oil turns them worse. Wealth is getting concentrated. Investment in infrastructure or education gets behind. There is a lot of corruption. This is something that happens periodically.”

Ross was speaking in general terms, citing Venezuela, Nigeria, and Chad.

Guyana’s trajectory is probably neither the best-case nor the worst-case outcome.

— Michael L. Ross, UCLA, to Bloomberg Opinion

This publication takes no position on where Guyana ultimately lands on that spectrum. What can be stated as fact, on the documentary record assembled here, is this: a sitting president’s family land holding measures more than double what has been publicly implied, tied to a 2011 lease instrument bearing a name and passport number this news-media has independently verified; and a piece of legislation capable of channeling up to $40 billion passed the same day as a $54.9 billion appropriations bill and a walkout over a ferry disaster that has killed an estimated 100 people — without a single hour of parliamentary debate.

Christopher Ram’s call for a Commission of Inquiry into the Long Creek matter remains, as of this writing, unanswered by government. Freddie Kissoon and Nazim Baksh, writing in the state-aligned press, have characterized this news-media’s coverage as noise and distraction. 

The lease, the acreage, and the statute do not move because a columnist calls them noise.

WHAT COMES NEXT

Bloomberg saw the smoke. It flew in, interviewed the principals, and flew out with an accurate sense that something in Guyana’s institutional architecture is under strain.

The 592 Guardian has been standing in the fire.

Part II of this series turns to the MV Barima disaster — the clearest test yet of whether Guyana’s institutions can absorb a genuine crisis without reaching first for control of the narrative, and second for the people asking questions about it.

This is Part I of a three-part series. Part II: “The Barima Test Case” and Part III: “Democracy on Paper” will follow.

— The Board

Civil Society Withholds Confidence in the MV Barima Commission, and Sets Out Five Tests

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ♦.ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM FOR GUYANA 

TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL GUYANA INC.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Georgetown, Guyana — Monday, 27 July 2026

Civil Society Withholds Confidence in the MV Barima Commission, and Sets Out Five Tests

Transparency International Guyana Inc. convened a national civil society consultation on the MV Barima disaster. Following the appointment of a Commission of Inquiry without consultation, TIGI today publishes the standard against which that Commission will be measured.

Transparency International Guyana Inc. (TIGI) extends its condolences to the families of those lost in the capsizing of the MV Barima on 18 July, and to the communities of Region One who have borne this loss most heavily. Seventy-three deaths are confirmed. Thirty of our fellow citizens remain unaccounted for. We hold the bereaved and the survivors in our thoughts, and we thank those still engaged in the work of recovery.

On Saturday 25 July, TIGI convened a virtual national consultation bringing together some two dozen participants: indigenous and community organisations, faith leaders across the Hindu, Christian and Islamic communities, the trade union movement, disaster management and maritime professionals, the press, academics at home and in the diaspora, and citizens who have lost family in this disaster. This statement reflects the substance of that consultation

What we acknowledge

The rescue was real. The Coast Guard went out at night. Private boat operators with no obligation to anyone went out alongside them. Trinidadian and Brazilian teams came. Seventy-six people are alive today who would otherwise not be. That deserves the nation’s thanks, and it has ours without reservation.

The decision to appoint an international Commission responds to a central public demand, and we recognise it as such. Guyanese civil society, the parliamentary opposition, the National Toshaos Council and the Guyana Human Rights Association all called for an inquiry that could not be accused of investigating itself.

Nothing that follows retracts either acknowledgement.

Why we cannot presently give this Commission our confidence

A competent rescue does not answer the question of why the rescue was necessary. And the appointment of non-Guyanese commissioners is not the same thing as an independent process.

The Commission was constituted without consultation. Neither the parliamentary opposition, nor the National Toshaos Council, nor the affected communities of Region One, nor civil society were consulted on the composition of this body. Article 13 of the Constitution establishes inclusionary democracy as a principal objective of our political system, and provides for the increasing involvement of citizens in the decisions that affect their well-being. The Caribbean Court of Justice has held that the obligation to consult is to be understood broadly. The President’s discretion to appoint under the Commissions of Inquiry Act is not in dispute. What is in dispute is whether that discretion may be exercised without the consultation our Constitution contemplates, on a matter of this gravity, affecting a State-operated service in which seventy-three citizens died.

The MV Barima was a State vessel. It was regulated by a State agency, operated by a State department, and falls under a Ministry whose leadership remains in place. This is not a government matter. It is a State matter, and the resources involved belong to the people of Guyana. A body examining the conduct of the State cannot be constituted by the State alone if it is to command public confidence.

The Terms of Reference have not been published, and no undertaking has been given that the Commission’s report will be released in full. Guyana has held Commissions of Inquiry before whose reports the Guyanese people have never seen.

TIGI therefore does not at this time have confidence in the Commission as constituted. We say this without prejudice to the individual commissioners, whose professional standing is not the subject of this statement. Our objection is to a process that excluded the people most affected from any part in constituting the body that will judge what happened to them

Five tests

TIGI and the organisations that joined our consultation will assess this Commission against five measures. Each is specific and each is verifiable.

  1. Publish the instrument of appointment and the Terms of Reference — now. Both should be published in full and laid before the National Assembly at its sitting today, before the Commission begins work. Parliament does not sit again until the autumn. If the scope of this inquiry is not opened to public and parliamentary scrutiny today, it will not be scrutinised at all before the Commission reports.
  2. Require each commissioner to publish a declaration of interests. This is ordinary practice in serious inquiries and no reputable commissioner would object to it. Each member should publish, before taking evidence, a signed declaration of any commercial, professional, institutional, familial or financial connection to the Government of Guyana, to any State agency or official, to the maritime sector in Guyana, or to any party with an interest in the outcome — together with the terms and value of their engagement. Independence that cannot be verified is not independence; it is an assurance. The public is entitled to the former.
  3. Guarantee publication of the report, in full, in advance. The undertaking should be given now, in writing, with a date. A report delivered privately to the authority that commissioned it is not an inquiry; it is a consultation.
  4. Separate the safety investigation from the criminal process. The purpose of a marine safety investigation is to prevent recurrence, not to allocate blame, and every mature maritime jurisdiction keeps the two apart. Crew, dock staff and ticketing personnel must be able to give evidence about what actually happens on that route without that evidence being used to prosecute them. Without testimonial protection, the Commission will not be told the truth. And a prosecution must not be permitted to stand in for an explanation: if this ends with a conviction and no reform, we will have held someone accountable and changed nothing.
  5. Name who owns the recommendations, and by when. This is the test Guyana has failed before. Ask who now recalls what the Mahdia inquiry recommended, or which of its recommendations were implemented. Every recommendation this Commission makes should carry a named responsible office, a published deadline, and progress reports laid before the National Assembly at six and twelve months. An inquiry whose findings have no owner is an inquiry designed to be forgotten 

What we propose

The remedy is neither complicated nor unprecedented. We call upon the President to suspend the commencement of the Commission’s work and to convene, within seven days, a consultation with the Leader of the Opposition, the National Toshaos Council, representatives of the affected communities and civil society, for the purpose of agreeing the composition of the Commission and its Terms of Reference.

On composition, we propose that the technical members be drawn from established marine casualty investigation bodies of long standing — such as the United Kingdom’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, or the Australian Transport Safety Bureau — whose investigators are career accident specialists, subject to institutional discipline, and demonstrably without connection to any party with an interest in the outcome. Technical cooperation may be sought from the International Maritime Organization in support of that work.

This costs the Government nothing but a week. It would convert a contested appointment into a national on

What must not wait for the Commission

Four matters require action now and should not be deferred pending any report.

Families must not be asked to sign away their rights. We are aware of the practice, following the Mahdia fire, of presenting bereaved families with one-time payments conditioned on documents foreclosing legal action against the State. We say plainly to every affected family: you are under no obligation to sign anything, and no payment should be conditioned on your surrender of any legal right. A compensation framework should be published, with defined amounts and timelines, that requires no waiver.

The orphaned children need a plan, not sympathy. Guardianship, schooling continuity and long-term care must be arranged now, with a named point of contact for each affected family and public reporting at six and twelve months. In the short term, those families who have lost their foodstuffs and other supplies should be helped with replacements.

Psychosocial support must reach the people it is meant to reach. Guyana has trained disaster-response personnel. Participants in our consultation with direct knowledge of that training report that those responders have not been deployed to this incident. That should be corrected this week.

The route must be made safe or suspended. A replacement vessel for this route was purchased for US$12.7 million and has not entered service because the necessary shoreside works at Port Kaituma remain incomplete. Government should publish a completion date. Until the route is demonstrably safe, subsidised alternative transport should be provided to the communities that depend on it

The standard

Region One has no road. For the people of Mabaruma, Port Kaituma and the surrounding communities, that vessel was not a convenience — it was the connection between a community and its country. The oldest vessel in the fleet was assigned to the citizens with the fewest alternatives. That is the fact this inquiry exists to confront.

TIGI does not raise these matters in a partisan spirit, and we decline the framing that treats questions as an attack. No child aboard that vessel belonged to a political party. What we are asking for is not a change of government but a standard of competence in matters where competence is the only thing between our citizens and the sea: that every passenger on every State vessel is counted before it sails, that no eighty-seven-year-old hull carries schoolchildren, and that when an inquiry tells this country what went wrong, someone is named to fix it.

We invite every Guyanese organisation and citizen willing to hold that standard — whatever their party, faith or region — to stand with us in it. Should the consultation we propose take place, TIGI will participate in good faith and will offer the Commission our full cooperation. We will report publicly on its progress against these five tests.

Media contact: Mike Singh, + 1 305 607-5587 (WhatsApp), MSIngh@TelkomCaribe.com

About Transparency International Guyana Inc. TIGI is the Guyana chapter of Transparency International, the global anti-corruption movement headquartered in Berlin and active in more than 100 countries. TIGI works for accountability, transparency and the rule of law in Guyana.

          

Moses Bhagwan and the Memory of a Nation

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THE 592. GUARDIAN ♦ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM FOR GUYANA 

 BOOK LAUNCH IN GUYANA-August. 08 2026

Moses Bhagwan and the Memory of a Nation

 After a sold-out launch in New York—where Moses captivated a packed audience with stories from his life—he’s coming to Guyana to continue sharing his journey. Join us for his Guyana—ENTER THE POLITICAL KINGDOM launch.

JOIN HIM ON: AUG 08 5pm. @ The Umana Yana—Gtown.

Moses Bhagwan has lived long enough to know that history is never as neat as the textbooks make it seem. It arrives in fragments, in clashes of memory, in the stubborn persistence of people who refuse to let their stories be erased. His memoir, Enter The Political Kingdom , carries that same spirit: part witness account, part political chronicle, part personal testament to a life spent inside Guyana’s hardest struggles.

Bhagwan is not writing from the margins. He is writing from the center of the storm. The publisher describes him as a descendant of indentured labourers whose path moved from rural beginnings into the thick of political life, across the PPP, the PYO, the Indian Political Revolutionary Associates, and the WPA. That journey alone gives the book its force. It is the story of one man, yes, but it is also the story of a country trying to find itself.

The Making Of A Political Voice

What makes Bhagwan’s story compelling is not only the scope of his political involvement, but the continuity of his purpose. He was there in the years when Guyana’s political divisions hardened, when ideals collided with power, and when the promise of independence had to be defended from disappointment and distortion. He moved through those years not as a passive observer, but as an active participant with convictions that clearly outlasted the momentary applause of politics.

 

We are indebted to Moses Bhagwan for gifting us this richly detailed autobiography, a text that resonantly offers an ethical, political, and moral compass for how we story, how we practice, how, in short, we live lives of meaningful relation in the ongoing work of justice, dignity and transformation’.– (D. Alissa Trotz, University of Toronto, Caribbean Studies & Women & Gender Studies)  

I am struck by the enduring lessons Moses Bhagwan imparted. He taught us that political struggle is not just about grand ideals or sweeping movements. It is also about the everyday acts of kindness, the moments of connection, and the willingness to listen and engage with others at a human level. These lessons remain as relevant today as thy were during those turbulent times’. —(Nigel Westmaas, Dept of African Studies, Hamilton College)

Enter the Political Kingdom is a retrospective political memoir about the making of a political activist committed to fighting for his homeland, Guyana. Apart from the on-the-ground perspective, Bhagwan provides a rich narrative of his experience as part of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) and working with two of Guyana’s most prominent political leaders, Cheddi Jagan and Walter Rodney among others. … Young people in the Caribbean and elsewhere, wondering how to effect meaningful change in their country and how to strategically organize will benefit from Bhagwan’s reflections on successful interventions and unrealized political dreams alike’. 

(Sasha Ann Panaram, Assoc. Professor, English, African & African-American Studies, Fordham University) 

‘This movingly written memoir offers the perspective of a freely disse nting, dissonant voice over six decades of involvement in radical politics across some of the most politically momentous events in Guyanese history’. — (Clem Seecharran, Professor Emeritus, London Metropolitan University) 

  THE 592 GUARDIAN 

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

 

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.

 

OPEN LETTER

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ◊ OPEN LETTER ◊· ACCOUNTABILITY & TRANSPARENCY 

OPEN LETTER

To the President, Cabinet, Parliament, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Guyana Police Force, MARAD, and the People of Guyana

We write with urgency, anger, and sorrow over the MV Barima tragedy, a disaster that has left a trail of death, missing persons, shattered families, and a nation demanding answers. This is not a moment for managed optics, selective explanations, or insiders marking their own homework. It is a moment for truth, independence, and full public accountability.

The facts already disclosed are damning enough to justify immediate and uncompromising action. Official and media reports indicate major discrepancies in the manifest, questions about loading and oversight, arrests and criminal probes, and the removal of staff connected to the vessel’s management pending investigation. That alone is enough to show that this matter cannot be credibly handled by anyone whose office, decisions, or silence may be part of the chain of failure.

For that reason, we are demanding therecusal of all public officers who had any direct or indirect involvement, responsibility, supervisory authority, or institutional interest in the MV Barima matter. That includes officers involved in vessel loading, passenger registration, safety enforcement, manifest verification, emergency response, ministerial oversight, or internal administration. A public officer cannot sit in judgment over a system they helped operate, defend, or conceal.

We state this plainly: the public has no obligation to trust a process controlled by persons who may be compromised by proximity, loyalty, career interest, or prior decision-making. If the investigation is to mean anything, then it must be clean at the root, not merely polished at the surface. Independent maritime inquiry standards exist for precisely this reason: to preserve impartiality, prevent interference, and protect public confidence in the final findings.

Accordingly, we call for the following:

  1. Immediate recusal of all public officers with any connection to the MV Barima tragedy.
  2. Immediate preservation of all evidence, records, manifests, surveillance footage, communications, and response logs.
  3. Full independence for any commission of inquiry, with no political or administrative interference.
  4. Public disclosure of all findings, recommendations, and disciplinary or criminal referrals.
  5. Protection for witnesses, survivors, whistleblowers, and families from intimidation or pressure.
  6. A permanent overhaul of maritime safety, inspection, and manifest control systems to prevent a repeat of this catastrophe.
  7. Full open cooperation and communications with the Joint Opposition.

This tragedy is not merely an accident to be managed; it is a test of whether the state can tell the truth about itself. If officials implicated by duty or association remain anywhere near the process, then the inquiry risks becoming a shield for the system instead of a search for justice. That would be an insult to the dead, the missing, and every family now waiting for answers.

The people of Guyana deserve more than condolences and press conferences. They deserve accountability without interference, investigation without self-protection, and justice without delay.

Signed,

Concerned Citizens, Civil Society Advocates, and Defenders of Transparency and Accountability

Date: July 23 2026. 

“The Power Of The People is Greater Than The People In Power “

 

 

Cricket Over Coffins: A Nation Mourns While the Turnstiles Turn

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ♦ Accountability Journalism for Guyana

Cricket Over Coffins: A Nation Mourns While the Turnstiles Turn

EDITORIAL  ·  Georgetown  ·  July 23, 2026

Three days. That is what the Head of State proclaimed for a nation still hauling bodies from the Atlantic. Wednesday the 22nd, Thursday the 23rd, Friday the 24th of July — declared, in the President’s own words, a period to honour the dead of the MV Barima, to stand with their families, and to let the country grieve as one. The Golden Arrowhead was lowered to half-mast on every government building. A National Day of Prayer was observed at the Kingston Seawall. Nights of reflection were scheduled in Port Kaituma and Mabaruma, the very communities that buried their own this week.

And on the second of those three declared days of national mourning — Thursday, July 23 — the Global Super League opened for business at Providence Stadium. Lahore Qalandars against Perth Scorchers XI in the afternoon. The Guyana Amazon Warriors against the San Francisco Unicorns under lights that evening. Floodlit T20 cricket, complete with music, sixes, and spectacle, staged in the same Georgetown that spent the same week counting its unaccounted-for.

A country cannot proclaim mourning with one hand and sell tickets to a carnival with the other.

THE CONTRADICTION THE STATE WILL NOT NAME

This news media does not dispute that the Global Super League was contracted, scheduled, and broadcast to the world long before the MV Barima went down off the Essequibo Coast. Commercial calendars are not drafted overnight, and Guyana Cricket did not choose this collision. But the tragedy did not respect the tournament’s fixture list either, and it is precisely at that point of collision that leadership is tested. A government capable of proclaiming three days of national mourning is a government capable of asking organizers, publicly and in good time, whether an opening night at Providence could be moved, muted, or marked with a minute of silence heard beyond the boundary rope.

Instead, as of this writing, there has been no public statement from the Office of the President, the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport, or Guyana Cricket  addressing the coincidence at all.

No confirmation that a moment of silence was observed before the first ball. No explanation of why an international sporting spectacle would proceed, floodlights blazing, on a night when Mabaruma prepared for its own night of reflection and prayer for the drowned. Silence, in this instance, is not neutral. Silence is a decision.

WHAT THE SILENCE COMMUNICATES

This publication has no quarrel with sport, and none with the Amazon Warriors, who carry the pride of this country onto the field in ordinary times. The quarrel is with sequencing, and with the absence of judgment at the level where judgment is supposed to live. A state that can gazette a proclamation of mourning within forty-eight hours of a tragedy can, in that same breath, ask whether floodlit entertainment at the national stadium sends the message it intends to send while grieving families in Region One are still being ferried home for burials.

To let the matches proceed without comment is to tell those families, and the wider public, that the machinery of commerce and spectacle does not pause for the machinery of grief — that the two can occupy the same forty-eight hours as though one has nothing to do with the other.

That is not a technical oversight. It is a signal about where this government’s instincts sit when solemnity and stadium lights are made to compete for the same calendar square.

THE 592 GUARDIAN’S POSITION

We do not call for the cancellation of the Global Super League. We call for candor. The Government of Guyana and Cricket West Indies owe the public a direct answer to three questions:

Was any consultation held between the Office of the President and tournament organizers before Thursday’s fixtures went ahead as scheduled?

Would a moment of silence or any other gesture of respect be observed at Providence on a declared day of national mourning?

And if no adjustment was considered, why not — what judgment, precisely, decided that convenience should not yield, even briefly, to grief?

A nation that wants to be believed when it declares mourning must be prepared to let that mourning cost it something — a delayed first ball, a dimmed marquee, a public acknowledgment that the dead of the MV Barima outrank the demands of a broadcast schedule.

Absent that, Guyanese are entitled to conclude that national mourning, as currently practised, is a script recited by the state rather than a discipline it imposes on itself.

— The Board

The MV Ma Lisha and the Government’s Undelivered Promise Three Years Later.

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ◊ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM FOR GUYANA

July , 2026 — Georgetown, Guyana

The MV Ma Lisha and the Government’s Undelivered Promise Three Years Later.

There is something profoundly revealing about the government’s handling of the MV Ma Lisha.

A US$12.7 million ferry was acquired, commissioned with fanfare, tied to a promised Port Kaituma route, and still—in 2026—the administration is offering explanations about a wharf that is not ready for the vessel it was supposed to serve. That is not merely a delay. It is a textbook example of political overreach, administrative disorder, and the now-familiar tendency to celebrate projects before the public has received a single meaningful benefit. 

Minister of Public Works Juan Edghill told the National Toshaos Council Conference that the MV Ma Lisha has not made its maiden voyage to Port Kaituma because the newly built wharf suffered structural problems after the soil shifted, forcing sections to be rebuilt. That explanation may sound technical, but it lands as something else entirely: a late admission that the state either did not adequately assess the ground conditions, did not properly sequence the works, or did not appreciate that a ferry is useless without a functioning berth.

Any of those failures is serious. Taken together, they amount to a public works embarrassment.

The chronology is damning. The MV Ma Lisha arrived in Guyana in 2023. By August of that year, officials were publicly telling the nation that the vessel would sail to Port Kaituma by December, and the wharf was being presented as nearing completion. The public was led to believe that the infrastructure and the vessel were moving in tandem toward a ready-made service. Yet here we are in 2026, and the government is still explaining why the boat cannot do the job it was bought to do.

That is not an isolated hiccup. It is a pattern of announcing victory before the battle is won.

The real issue is not whether soil can shift. Of course it can. The issue is why a government that likes to advertise itself as modern, competent, and development-driven would get the sequence so wrong. A state serious about delivery does not buy a vessel first and then discover that the berth is not properly prepared. It does not commission a project with a future landing point that still requires reconstruction years later.

It does not ask citizens to applaud a transport solution that exists mostly in press statements and ceremonial language.

Port Kaituma should have been the beneficiary of foresight. Instead, it has become a symbol of hurried promises and slow correction. In 2023, the Port Kaituma Wharf was reported to be 60 or 61 percent completed, with officials projecting completion by December and urging the contractor to finish even earlier so the MV Ma Lisha could begin service for the Christmas season. That was the promise. The reality, according to the minister’s own 2026 disclosure, is that structural issues emerged and sections had to be rebuilt. Somewhere between promise and delivery, accountability disappeared.

This is where the government’s defenders usually retreat to technical excuses. They point to engineering complications, weather, terrain, contractor performance, or unforeseen setbacks. But public administration is not judged by the existence of complications; it is judged by whether those complications were anticipated, managed, and resolved in a timely way. A project of this significance should not be drifting years beyond its promised usefulness while the public is told, once again, to wait.

Every delay has a cost, and the people paying that cost are the residents of Region One, business operators, commuters, and families who need reliable transport, not patriotic speeches.

 The MV Ma Lisha matter also fits neatly into a wider and troubling pattern. Across the public works sector, the government has repeatedly had to explain missed deadlines, stalled projects, and projects that remain incomplete long after the rhetoric has moved on. That pattern matters because it strips the administration’s grand narrative of its credibility.

If the government cannot align a ferry with its wharf, why should the public trust the same machinery to manage larger and more complex national projects without waste, drift, or delay?

If the government cannot align a ferry with its wharf, why should the public trust the same machinery to manage larger and more complex national projects without waste, drift, or delay?

There is also a deeper political problem here. The administration has built a brand around “world class” delivery, but world-class systems do not leave citizens guessing whether a major asset can even berth at the port for which it was purchased.                                  World-class governance does not rely on explanations that surface years after the fact.

World-class governance would have ensured engineering due diligence, synchronised procurement, and transparent milestones long before the ceremonial arrival of the vessel. Instead, the public is left with a costly ferry, a compromised wharf, and a growing impression that the government confuses activity with achievement.

 What should the public be asking now :

Who approved the project sequence?

What soil and structural studies were done before construction?

Why was the public told in 2023 that the route would be ready by Christmas, when that promise did not hold?

What is the total cost of the delay to the state and to the people of Port Kaituma? And why should anyone believe that the next major project will fare any better if this one is still being explained away in 2026?

These are not hostile questions. They are necessary ones.

The MV Ma Lisha was supposed to improve river transport and enhance the lives of hinterland communities. Instead, it has become a monument to poor sequencing and administrative self-congratulation. The government bought the boat. It promised the route. It boasted of progress. But it did not, apparently, ensure that the wharf was ready to receive the vessel. That is not development. That is improvisation with public money.

Port Kaituma deserves better than a ferry stranded by the state’s own miscalculations. Guyanese taxpayers deserve better than a government that announces the destination before building the road, the wharf, or in this case the landing place. And the administration, if it is serious about its “world class” claim, should stop hiding behind explanations and start delivering results.

The truth is plain. The MV Ma Lisha story is not just about one ferry. It is about a government that keeps mistaking announcements for achievement and ceremonies for service.

Until that changes, the public will keep seeing the same pattern: money spent, promises made, deadlines missed, and explanations offered long after confidence has already been lost.

THE 592 GUARDIAN