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

 

BOOK LAUNCH. REMINDER ♦ SATURDAY JULY 18 2026:

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BOOK LAUNCH. REMINDER ♦ SATURDAY JULY 18 2026

Enter the Political Kingdom- By   Moses Bhagwan 

On Saturday, July 18, 2026, readers, thinkers, and admirers of Guyanese political history will gather at Global Christian Ministries in Richmond Hill, New York, for the launch of Moses Bhagwan’s Enter the Political Kingdom: A Guyanese Political Memoir. More than a book presentation, this event marks the arrival of a compelling public voice whose life, reflections, and political memory have long carried the weight of experience, conviction, and controversy.

Bhagwan is not merely the author of a memoir; he is a witness to, and participant in, the turbulent political currents that have shaped Guyana’s modern history.

This is the kind of launch where people may come for the book, but stay for the writer. Bhagwan’s story, voice, and perspective invite deeper questions about power, struggle, memory, and the enduring meaning of political engagement in Guyana and the wider diaspora. With introductions by distinguished scholars and commentators, and a programme that includes readings, remarks, and audience interaction, the evening promises both intellectual substance and human drama. It is, in every sense, a rare occasion — one that places the author, his ideas, and his lived history squarely at the center of public attention.

Super El Niño threatens to unleash one of the most destructive Seasons

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ◊ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM ◊ FOR GUYANA

Super El Niño threatens to unleash one of the most destructive Seasons

As a Super El Niño threatens to unleash one of the most destructive seasons in recent memory, a provocative scientific paper asks a difficult question: if we can’t stop the planet from warming fast enough, should we consider temporarily dimming the sun to blunt the worst impacts?

A team at Scripps Institution of Oceanography used climate models — and lessons from the 2019–20 Australian “Black Summer” fires — to test whether marine cloud brightening, a form of solar geoengineering, could tamp down a powerful El Niño. The idea is simple in concept and fiendishly complex in execution: spray sea-salt aerosols into low ocean clouds so they reflect more sunlight, cool the tropical Pacific, and reduce the spike in global temperatures that a Super El Niño would bring.

Their models show it might work — at least partially. Targeted cloud brightening applied early could shave roughly 40 percent off peak El Niño warming in the simulations. That could translate into fewer heatwaves, smaller wildfires, reduced crop failures, and less pressure on overstretched health and emergency systems. For regions like the Caribbean and Guyana, where livelihoods depend on stable rainy seasons, fisheries and agriculture, and where disasters quickly overwhelm limited response capacity, any tool that lowers immediate harm is tempting.

But temptation is not policy. The paper is a proof of concept, not a policy prescription — and for good reason. The gulf between a model result and a safe, effective technology is vast. Engineers currently lack sprayers capable of delivering the right quantity and size of particles over the required ocean areas. Models still struggle to predict the cascading, remote effects of changing cloud reflectivity on global rainfall patterns. And there is real risk of overcorrection: a “too strong” intervention could trigger a mega La Niña with its own catalogue of floods, storms and agricultural disruption.

Beyond technical uncertainty lie profound ethical and geopolitical questions. Who decides to dim the sun for months or years? A handful of wealthy states, private funders, or an international process that includes the most vulnerable voices? The distributional stakes are enormous: a change that reduces heat in one place might reduce rain in another, hitting small island states, farmers, or urban poor who already carry the heaviest climate burdens. Then there’s the moral hazard: the more credible a techno-fix becomes, the more it risks blunting the political urgency to cut greenhouse gas emissions — the only durable solution to the climate crisis.

So what should policymakers, civil society and the public in the Caribbean and Guyana take from this study? First: don’t be distracted. Geoengineering research must be watched, regulated and debated transparently, but it is not a substitute for rapid emissions cuts or for costly, necessary adaptation. Second: demand a voice. Any international discussion of geoengineering governance must include the countries most at risk. We cannot allow decisions about global sunlight to be taken behind closed doors by institutions or corporations with little stake in our futures. Third: invest in readiness. Whether or not marine cloud brightening ever becomes viable, this decade will bring some of the highest-stakes weather in living memory. Strengthening water management, resilient agriculture, early-warning systems and health infrastructure is non-negotiable.

Finally, treat this science as what it is: an alarm bell. The study underlines a brutal truth — climate change is not a gradual nuisance; it is pushing natural systems like El Niño into new, more dangerous regimes. If a high-tech intervention is even being discussed as a possible emergency tool, that is evidence of failure, not ingenuity. Our response should be proportionate: accelerate deep emissions cuts, fund adaptation where lives and livelihoods hang in the balance, and build inclusive, binding governance for any research into planetary-scale interventions.

We cannot let the lure of a quick technical fix derail our political will. The choice before us is stark: commit to the long, difficult work of decarbonisation and resilience now, or gamble with untested manipulations of the very system that sustains life on Earth.

THE 592 GUARDIAN — EDITORIAL BOARD, JULY 2026

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.  Transparency International Guyana calls for independent investigation into President Ali’s Long Creek livestock farm.

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THE 592 GUARDIAN♦ ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.   

Transparency International Guyana calls for independent investigation into President Ali’s Long Creek livestock farm

Georgetown, Guyana — July 2026  — Transparency International Guyana (TI Guyana) is alarmed by recent reports indicating that President Mohamed Irfaan Ali owns a substantial livestock farm at Long Creek. These revelations raise urgent and serious questions about conflicts of interest, misuse of public resources, and violations of the Public Integrity Act.

TI Guyana has long stood as Guyana’s leading anti-corruption watchdog, committed to the principles of transparency, accountability, and the rule of law. The allegations surrounding the Long Creek facility risk further eroding global confidence in Guyana’s governance and investment climate. If left unaddressed, these matters will have long-term negative consequences for the nation’s reputation as a stable, transparent, and attractive investment destination.

TI Guyana calls for an immediate, fair, and impartial investigation that addresses the following core pillars:

1.Conflict of interest and transparency

– Determine whether the President’s ownership of the Long Creek farm creates a conflict with official duties.

– Establish whether the ownership was disclosed in accordance with applicable law and public sector transparency standards.

2.Use of state resources and personal enrichment

– Investigate any use of state property, personnel, funds, or privileges that may have benefited the farm or the President personally.

– Identify any instances where state resources were diverted for private gain.

3.Compliance with the Public Integrity Act

– Assess whether actions related to the farm violated the Public Integrity Act or other relevant statutes and codes of conduct.

– Recommend corrective or disciplinary measures where breaches are found.

4.Abuse of state privileges and official duties

– Examine any evidence of preferential treatment, regulatory leniency, or other advantages afforded to the farm because of the President’s position.

– Evaluate whether official duties were performed in a manner that improperly advantaged private interests.

To ensure impartiality and to remove any perception of bias, TI Guyana invites Transparency International member chapters and independent experts from other jurisdictions to lead and conduct the investigation. TI Guyana will serve strictly in a consultative and facilitative capacity, providing local context and logistical support while ceding investigative independence to external experts.

TI Guyana reiterates its commitment to:

– The orderly, transparent, and structured development of Guyana.

– The rule of law, public accountability, and equal application of ethics standards for all public officials.

– Protecting Guyana’s reputation as a country that respects governance norms and fosters investor confidence.

The Government of Guyana must address these allegations with alacrity. Continued obfuscation or attempts to gaslight the public will only deepen domestic mistrust and further damage Guyana’s international standing. The evidence published to date is serious and demands full, transparent scrutiny.

About Transparency International Guyana

Transparency International Guyana is an independent, non-partisan organization dedicated to preventing corruption, promoting transparency, and strengthening public integrity in Guyana. We advocate for accountable governance and provide support for investigations that advance the public interest.

Transparency International Guyana

Media contact: THE 592 GUARDIAN.                                                                                                 Website: 592guardian.com

 

 

 

 

Ancestors of the RiverA Nation Built From Below

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BOOK REVIEW

Ancestors of the River ♦ BY Moses Bhagwan.          A Nation Built From Below

The 592 Guardian | Books & Culture

Moses Bhagwan’s Ancestors of the River  is more than a family chronicle.

It is a restoration project — an effort to recover the dignity, labour and intelligence of ordinary Guyanese families whose lives helped shape this country long before history began to flatter the powerful.

The book tells of four families struggling through the hard economic conditions of early colonial British Guiana — clearing land, planting crops, raising poultry, fishing — in order to survive with a measure of independence.  That is already a compelling premise. But the deeper value of the work lies in what it argues about nation-building from below. These were not passive rural survivors. They were families who used education, discipline and faith to push their children into teaching, preaching, medicine, law and engineering.

The professional Guyanese middle class did not arrive by colonial grace. It was carved out by people who had nothing but purpose and one another.

That theme gives Ancestors of the River a social meaning well beyond the personal. It reminds us that colonial society was not only a system of extraction and control. It was also a place where Black and Indian working families, through sacrifice and collective purpose, converted hardship into mobility and self-respect. The detail Bhagwan offers of two patriarchs who were riding preachers — men who moved district to district teaching Hindi — adds an especially valuable cultural layer. Here is the transmission of language, religion and identity operating entirely outside the formal institutions of the colonial state: a quiet, determined act of civilisational preservation.

Bhagwan’s strength is that he writes with memory rather than abstraction. He is not observing history from a safe distance. He is part of the history he is recounting, and that insider position gives the narrative its honesty, its warmth and its authority. The book reads as both family testimony and social record simultaneously, and the combination is rare.

There is also something notably humane about the way the story is presented. The blurb emphasises family cooperation, mutual support, humour, fondness, passion and pathos — and that matters. Too many accounts of colonial life reduce people to victims, statistics or stereotypes. Ancestors of the River insists on something more truthful: that colonial peoples were complex, resourceful and fully human, capable of building institutions, preserving culture and sustaining one another even under conditions designed to break them.

If there is a limitation, it may be that the book’s sweep — family, plantation society, culture, religion and the first stirrings of political consciousness — is so broad that the narrative must work hard to avoid becoming episodic. But that is a reasonable risk for a work of this historical ambition, and the breadth may be precisely its appeal, particularly for readers in Guyana and the diaspora who are searching for a story that reflects not only private memory but a shared social inheritance.

In the end, Ancestors of the River is a book of remembrance, but not nostalgia alone. It looks backward in order to recover the meanings of labour, education, faith and family cohesion in the making of modern Guyana — and by recovering them, it makes an implicit demand on the present. Guyana’s public conversation about nationhood is still too often dominated by elites, by party machines, by the comprador class that inherited the colonial architecture and called it independence. This book is a corrective. The real foundations of this country were laid by humble people whose names history has not always treated with fairness.

Moses Bhagwan has treated them with fairness. That is no small thing.

Ancestors of the River is available through Amazon-https://a.co/d/07cOe9JT

 

The 592 Guardian is an independent accountability journalism outlet covering Guyanese governance, politics and extractive industry.

THE GUIANA SHIELD IS BEING REORGANIZED

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 The 592 GUARDIAN♦EDITORIAL♦ENVIORMENTAL ACCOUNTABILITY

The Guiana Shield Is Being Reorganised — And Guyana Is Watching From the Sidelines    What is happening in Venezuela’s mining belt is not Venezuela’s problem alone– JUNE 2026

The arrest of Nicolás Maduro by American special forces in January 2026 was treated in Guyana largely as a geopolitical curiosity — the end of a neighbourhood nuisance, perhaps even a quiet relief given the years of Essequibo belligerence his government sponsored. That reading was dangerously shallow. What has unfolded since in Venezuela’s Bolívar state is not the tidying up of a failed state. It is the reorganisation of the Guiana Shield — the same ancient geological formation that underlies Guyana’s gold and uranium frontier — under American strategic and commercial direction. Guyana is not a spectator to this process. It is a participant whether it chooses to be or not.

 On June 8th, army helicopters swept into Las Claritas, Venezuela’s ground zero for illegal gold mining in Bolívar state. Thousands of freelance prospectors fled. Days later, the United States launched an air strike killing Héctor “Niño” Guerrero Flores, the boss of the Tren de Aragua crime group. President Trump announced the operation was “co-ordinated closely with our friends in Venezuela.” Within weeks, Western mining executives were on the ground at El Callao, one of Venezuela’s most famous gold complexes. In April, Venezuela’s National Assembly had already passed a mining-reform bill cutting royalties, prolonging concessions and allowing international arbitration of disputes. 

The message was unambiguous: the Orinoco Mining Arc, a Portugal-sized stretch of rainforest and mineral wealth that Chávez nationalised and Maduro surrendered to criminal syndicates, is now open for Western business under American military cover.

 This should command the full attention of every Guyanese citizen who has followed this news—outlet coverage of the GGMC’s nine-year audit backlog, the U92 Energy Corp. uranium play at Kurupung, the G2 Goldfields/GMIN merger and Guyana’s failure to enforce change-of-control provisions, and the gold laundering vectors through the Guiana Shield into Brazil and beyond. 

 What The Economist describes from the Venezuelan side of the Shield is the mirror image of what we have been documenting from the Guyanese side: the same unregulated extractive frontier, the same absent regulatory infrastructure, the same criminal networks, the same geological wealth being approached without the governance architecture to manage it responsibly.

 The Shield Does Not Recognise Our Border

 The Guiana Shield is one of the oldest geological formations on Earth, stretching across Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana and northern Brazil. It holds some of the world’s most significant deposits of gold, diamonds, bauxite and — as the Kurupung case makes plain — uranium. The criminal networks that have exploited it do not organise themselves around the borders drawn by colonial cartographers. Tren de Aragua, whose leadership the Americans just eliminated in Las Claritas, has been documented operating across the Shield. The FARC dissidents and the National Liberation Army, whom The Economist identifies as still active in Venezuela’s mining belt despite the American air strikes, are not going to demobilise. They are, as one Venezuelan mining industry source told the magazine plainly, going to move. “If you clean up one area, they are going to move somewhere else. It’s that simple.”

 Where do they move? Deeper into national parks, says The Economist. Venezuela’s Imataca and Canaima national parks border Guyana. The Pakaraima mountains straddle the frontier. The same jungle that conceals illegal mining operations at Mazoa Hill and along the Cuyuni river system on the Guyanese side connects without interruption to the zone the Americans are now attempting to clear on the Venezuelan side. The displacement of criminal mining networks from Bolívar state is not a solution to the problem of unregulated extraction on the Guiana Shield. 

It is a pressure valve that will push those networks toward the path of least resistance. Guyana needs to be asking right now whether it is that path.

 The Regulatory Vacuum Is the Real Security Risk

 The government of Guyana will point to the Guyana Gold Board, the GGMC, the Environmental Protection Agency and the various bilateral security arrangements with the United States as evidence that the country is not defenceless. These institutions exist. The question this newspaper has been asking for months — and which events in Venezuela now make urgent — is whether they function adequately for the moment we are in.

The GGMC has not produced audited financial statements in nine years. That is not a bureaucratic inconvenience. In a context where criminal networks are being actively displaced from one part of the Guiana Shield toward another, it means that Guyana’s primary regulatory body for gold and mineral extraction cannot account for what has been extracted, by whom, under what conditions, and where it went. The Mazoa Hill controversy and the Cataratas vector we have previously documented are not isolated incidents. They are evidence of a structural gap between the extractive activity occurring on 

 Guyana’s territory and the state’s capacity to govern it.

 The G2 Goldfields/GMIN merger is a related symptom. When the ownership of a major mining concession changes hands through a corporate restructuring and the state’s change-of-control provisions are not enforced, the message sent to the extractive industry — legitimate and otherwise — is that Guyana’s regulatory framework is a formality, not a constraint. That message travels. It is heard in Caracas, in São Paulo, in the offices of commodity traders in Geneva and Singapore who are now making decisions about the post-Maduro Guiana Shield.

And then there is uranium. The U92 Energy Corp. Kurupung project sits in a jurisdiction with

→no domestic regulatory framework for uranium extraction.

→no specialised inspectorate.

→no established environmental liability regime 

→no parliamentary oversight mechanism with the technical capacity to evaluate what is being proposed.

 We have made this argument before on purely governance grounds.                                                                                                    We make it again now on security grounds: a uranium frontier on the Pakaraima border, adjacent to a zone from which armed criminal networks are being displaced by American military operations, is not a situation that a functioning state should approach with a nine-year audit backlog and an unstaffed Data Protection Commission.

 Washington’s New Architecture and Guyana’s Position

 The broader regional picture demands clear-eyed assessment. The Economist documents what it calls the “Trumpification” of Latin America — seven consecutive right-wing presidential victories since January 2025, an ideological convergence around Washington’s priorities on crime, migration and extractive industry, and a network of direct American military co-operation from Ecuador to Venezuela. The PPP government has historically cultivated a careful non-alignment, maintaining relations with Washington, Beijing and Caracas simultaneously. That triangulation is now under structural pressure.

The US-Venezuela arrangement is revealing in its terms. Venezuela under Rodríguez is supplying mineral access, security co-operation and political compliance in exchange for American recognition, sanctions relief, oil export waivers and military protection. Maduro’s Essequibo aggression — the December 2023 referendum, the military mobilisation, the maps redrawn in Caracas — was a product of that previous regime’s political economy. The Rodríguez government, operating under American supervision, has different incentive structures. The Essequibo claim has not been formally withdrawn. But the regime that was prepared to mobilise it militarily has been replaced by one whose survival depends on American goodwill.

This creates a narrow diplomatic window that Guyana should be exploiting with urgency and precision.

 The International Court of Justice case proceeds on its own timeline. But the political conditions that made Venezuelan adventurism possible have shifted significantly. “A Guyanese government with the strategic literacy and institutional capacity to engage this moment could consolidate real security gains. A government that treats it as background noise while managing oil revenues and managing elections is leaving an opening”.

The question of how Georgetown engages Washington in this new regional architecture is not separable from the question of whether Guyana’s extractive governance is adequate to the moment. 

American capital is rushing into the Guiana Shield. American military presence is reorganizing its security environment. American strategic interest in the region’s mineral wealth — gold, uranium, rare earths — is not abstract. 

If Guyana cannot demonstrate that it governs its portion of the Shield with the transparency and accountability that Western investors and institutions nominally require, it will find itself not as a partner in this new architecture but as the next ungoverned frontier to be reorganised by someone else.

What Needs to Happen

This new outlet does not traffic in alarm for its own sake. We state what the evidence requires:                                                                                               
→The GGMC audit backlog must be cleared as a matter of national security, not administrative housekeeping. The government should be asked in Parliament, specifically and on the record, when audited financial statements for 2017 through 2025 will be tabled. No answer is itself an answer.

→The U92 Kurupung uranium project must be paused pending the establishment of a fit-for-purpose regulatory framework. This is not anti-investment. It is the condition for investment that does not create liabilities the Guyanese state cannot manage.

The Parliamentary Sectoral Committee on Economic Services, reduced from monthly to quarterly meetings in the same period that these extractive governance questions have intensified, must be restored to regular function and given the technical support to conduct meaningful oversight of the mining sector.

 The Guyana government must make a formal public assessment of the security implications of the displacement of criminal mining networks from Venezuela’s Bolívar state toward the Pakaraima border region. If that assessment has been made internally, it should be shared with Parliament and the public.

And the PPP government must decide, clearly and on the record, what Guyana’s strategic posture is in the new regional architecture that:                                                                            American policy is constructing. Non-alignment was a coherent position when the region was genuinely multipolar. It becomes incoherence when the Shield on which your economy depends is being reorganised under the military and commercial direction of one power, on your border, right now.

The Guiana Shield does not belong to Washington.

 It does not belong to Caracas. 

A significant portion of it belongs to the people of Guyana.

It is time to govern it like it does.

 The 592 Guardian is an independent accountability journalism outlet. We accept no government advertising and carry no political affiliations.