Gone: The Data Commissioner

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THE 592 GUARDIAN

Independent Accountability Journalism

 EDITORIAL •ACCOUNTABILITY

June 2026

Gone: The Data Commissioner, the Witness, and the Charade of Accountability

 On Monday, the high-profile elections fraud trial proceeding before Acting Chief Magistrate Faith McGusty at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Court was adjourned — not because justice had run its course, but because the State’s own witness had apparently run away.

Aneal Giddings, who served as Information Technology Manager at the Guyana Elections Commission during the catastrophically contested March 2020 General and Regional Elections, is currently out of the jurisdiction. The prosecution, unable to produce him, applied to have his evidence-in-chief received via Zoom. Defence attorney Nigel Hughes objected on grounds that a witness of Giddings’ centrality to the case must appear in person for cross-examination — a position this publication considers entirely correct as a matter of both law and elementary fairness.

Magistrate McGusty offered a reasonable compromise: remote evidence-in-chief, with Giddings present in person for cross-examination. The prosecution sought instructions. When the matter was recalled, the State’s preference was to defer his testimony entirely — until he becomes available.

The court was then informed that the next scheduled witness is former Minister of Home Affairs Robeson Benn, expected on Wednesday, June 24. The trial grinds on. But the question this development raises does not grind on quietly. It detonates.

 The Double Vacancy at the Heart of Guyana’s Digital State

Here is what the public record now compels us to state plainly: Aneal Giddings is not merely a reluctant witness in an elections fraud prosecution. He is, simultaneously, Guyana’s newly appointed Data Protection Commissioner — the sole officer of a statutory body whose mandate is to regulate the collection, storage, processing, and transfer of personal data in a country where an oil boom has accelerated state and corporate data-harvesting at a pace that existing law is utterly ill-equipped to address.

Sources available to The 592 Guardian indicate that Giddings has not temporarily travelled. He has migrated permanently to New York.

If this is accurate, then Guyana currently has no functioning Data Protection Commissioner. The office is not dormant. It is abandoned. And in that vacuum, data harvesting proceeds — commercial, governmental, and extractive — without the statutory oversight the legislature intended when it established the Data Protection Act.

We ask the Ali administration directly: Is the Data Protection Commission operational? Is Aneal Giddings being paid from the public purse while residing permanently in New York? Has the government received formal notice of his departure or his intention to vacate the office? And if he has vacated it in fact if not yet in law, when does the administration intend to tell the Guyanese people?

 A Witness in an Elections Fraud Trial Cannot Simply Be Unavailable

Giddings is not a peripheral figure in this prosecution. As GECOM’s IT Manager during the 2020 elections, he occupied one of the most consequential technical positions in what became the most disputed electoral count in Guyana’s post-independence history. The charges before the court — nineteen counts of conspiracy, implicating Region Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo, former Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield, former Deputy Chief Elections Officer Roxanne Myers, former PNCR Chairperson Volda Lawrence, and others — rest substantially on what happened to the data during that count. Giddings sits at the technical centre of that question.

The defence is right to insist on in-person cross-examination. The State was right to acknowledge it cannot proceed otherwise. But what neither acknowledgement addresses is the deeper structural embarrassment now before this court and this country: the prosecution’s key technical witness has emigrated, and the government that is prosecuting the case appointed that same witness to a statutory regulatory post that now sits empty.

How does one square that appointment with due diligence? Did no one in the relevant ministry ask whether a witness in a live criminal prosecution — one touching directly on his conduct at GECOM — was an appropriate candidate for a statutory office requiring continuous and in-country presence? Or was the appointment itself a form of patronage extended to a figure whose continued cooperation with the prosecution required some form of inducement?

We do not assert the latter as fact. We assert it as a question the public is entitled to have answered, openly, by the administration that made the appointment.

 The Data Protection Vacuum Is Not a Technicality

Guyana’s Data Protection Act was enacted to govern a landscape that is rapidly becoming one of the most consequential regulatory terrains in the country’s modern history. State agencies collect biometric data. Oil companies and their contractors collect proprietary geological data that doubles as territorial intelligence. Telecommunications providers harvest communications metadata. Commercial banks and fintechs process transaction data that, in aggregate, constitutes an intimate record of economic life.

The Data Protection Commissioner is not a ceremonial post. It is the statutory checkpoint between Guyanese citizens and the entities — state and private — that seek to exploit their personal data for commercial or political advantage. In a petrostate economy characterised by procurement opacity, regulatory capture, and institutional thinness, that checkpoint matters.

If the Commissioner’s chair is empty because the appointee has migrated to New York while nominally holding office, then data harvesting is proceeding in a legislative context that provides for oversight but in practice provides none. The companies drilling into Guyana’s data ecosystem — like the companies drilling into its seabed — are operating in a surveillance-friendly vacuum.

The legislature did not pass the Data Protection Act so that it could be administered by a phantom.

 What the Administration Must Do

The 592 Guardian calls on the Ali administration to immediately clarify the status of Aneal Giddings’ appointment as Data Protection Commissioner, including whether he has formally resigned, whether he continues to draw salary or allowances, and whether any acting appointment has been made in his absence.

We call on the Director of Public Prosecutions to publicly address the implications of the prosecution’s key witness having emigrated, and to explain what assurances — if any — the State has secured regarding his return and availability to testify.

We call on the National Assembly’s relevant committee to summon the Minister responsible for the Data Protection Act to account for the operational status of the Commission. The people of Guyana are entitled to know whether the Act they funded through their parliamentary representatives is being administered or merely filed.

And we call on civil society — particularly the legal profession, technology sector advocates, and human rights organisations — to monitor this vacancy actively. The absence of a functioning Data Commissioner is not an administrative oversight. It is a governance failure with direct consequences for every Guyanese whose personal data is being collected, processed, and traded while the office meant to protect them sits dark.

 The elections fraud prosecution is, at its core, a test of whether Guyana’s institutions will hold those who violated the democratic will of the people accountable. If its witnesses can emigrate and its statutory officers can vanish without consequence, that test is already failing. Guyana cannot prosecute electoral fraud on Mondays and tolerate institutional abandonment on Tuesdays. The law applies, or it does not.

 — The Editors, The 592 Guardian

The MOAP Conduit: Ghost Payroll at the Gas-to-Energy Site

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THE 592 GUARDIAN

EDITORIAL   |   June 2026

The MOAP Conduit: Ghost Payroll at the Gas-to-Energy Site

A leaked digital payment trail at Wales reveals an undocumented foreign workforce paid outside Guyana’s tax and labour laws — and exposes a pattern this newspaper has now documented twice in two months.

The Wales, West Bank Demerara campsite is presented by the Irfaan Ali administration as the flagship achievement of Guyana’s energy transition. Reporting built on leaked digital payment records and worker testimony now establishes that it is also the site of a payroll structure engineered to keep hundreds of foreign labourers outside the reach of Guyana’s labour and tax regime. The workers building the Gas-to-Energy plant for Lindsayca are not paid by Lindsayca or by any of its named partners. They are paid by an intermediary identified as MOAP Inc., a company whose paper directors sit atop a structure tightly bound to Lindsayca’s supply chain.

The mechanics are not subtle. Disbursements move in bulk into digital wallets rather than through the banking system, and the payment confirmations reviewed by reporters show no NIS contribution and no income tax withheld on any of them. Of the roughly 1,500 people working the site, only 50 are Guyanese. The remainder are, on the available evidence, substantially undocumented — holding no valid work permit, and dependent for both income and protection on a company most could not properly identify if asked to.

One worker, speaking only on condition of anonymity, put it plainly: workers paid through MOAP have “little recourse and are afraid for our job and income.” He asked why Minister of Labour Keoma Griffith has never visited or inspected the site. It is a modest demand — an inspection — and it is one the Ministry has, by every account available to this news outlet, failed even once to meet. No labour inspection. No work-permit verification. No site visit, on a project of this scale and public cost. That is not oversight. It is abdication.

Readers of this publication will recognize the architecture, because we have already documented its near-identical twin this year. Our reporting on the EKAA HRIM labour case at the Batavia quarry — built on an ILO submission dossier — set out a dual-contract structure and cross-border wage-splitting arrangement bearing several recognized indicators of forced labour. The Wales/MOAP arrangement, on the facts now public, shares the same load-bearing features: an opaque intermediary standing between principal contractor and worker, payment routed to defeat statutory deduction, and a workforce rendered too vulnerable by its own undocumented status to report what is being done to it.

That two of Guyana’s highest-profile, foreign-financed projects — one in quarrying, one in energy infrastructure — have independently converged on the same payroll concealment model in the same calendar year is the detail that should alarm Georgetown more than either case in isolation. It is no longer credible to treat either as an isolated contractor’s misconduct. It is now evidence of a structural gap: Guyana has no functioning inspection regime for the manpower and intermediary-payment companies operating inside its largest capital projects, and contractors on both sides of the economy appear to know it.

That gap persists because no one with the authority to close it has chosen to. The GTE Taskforce, chaired by Winston Brassington, has spent much of the past two years defending Lindsayca’s position on the project through cost overruns and contentious proceedings before the Dispute Adjudication and Amicable Settlement Board. Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, by every indication available to this newspaper, continues to favour Lindsayca as the frontrunner for Phase Two. A payroll structure that appears designed to defeat NIS and tax law has done nothing, so far, to disturb that confidence.

This is not an allegation of personal wrongdoing against Mr. Brassington or the Vice President individually. It is an indictment of pattern: a procurement and oversight architecture, spanning extractive industry and infrastructure alike, that treats statutory compliance as negotiable so long as the contractor remains politically favoured and the project remains politically convenient to defend.

This publication is not interested in waiting for an internal review that will not be conducted. We are calling, on the record, for four concrete actions: an immediate and unannounced inspection of the Wales campsite by the Ministry of Labour and the Guyana Revenue Authority; full public disclosure of MOAP Inc.’s beneficial ownership and its contractual relationship to Lindsayca; a National Insurance Scheme audit of every wage disbursement processed through MOAP since the project’s start; and a joint inquiry by the Public Accounts Committee and the Committee on Foreign Relations into how an unaudited intermediary payroll company gained access to the country’s largest infrastructure project in the first place.

Failing that, this is a matter for the International Labour Organization, which is already reviewing a comparable dossier arising from Batavia. Guyana’s energy transition cannot be built, literally, on the unpaid statutory obligations of an undocumented workforce too frightened to come forward under its own name. A worker has already asked the Minister of Labour to visit his own jobsite. He should not have had to.

— The 592 Guardian Editorial Board

Silence Protects Corruption. Whistleblowers Protect Us All.

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The 592 Guardian ♦Accountability Journalism♦ June 2026

Silence Protects Corruption. Whistleblowers Protect Us All

As Guyana observes Whistleblowers Day, the question is no longer whether wrongdoing exists within our institutions—it is whether those who witness it can safely speak.

A whistleblower is often the first and only line of defense against corruption. Yet in Guyana, the systems meant to support accountability remain weak, inconsistent, or compromised. That reality does not just discourage disclosure—it actively protects misconduct.

Consider public procurement. Billions of dollars in contracts continue to flow through a system where the Public Procurement Commission (PPC) remains underutilized and, at times, sidelined. Concerns about sole-sourcing, limited tendering, and politically connected contractors are frequently raised, yet rarely pursued with transparency or urgency. Insiders within ministries and agencies see these patterns unfold in real time. How many remain silent because they know reporting mechanisms are ineffective or unsafe?

Or take the Natural Resource Fund (NRF), the centerpiece of Guyana’s oil wealth management. While legislative frameworks exist, questions persist about oversight, withdrawals, and the broader transparency of spending. 

When accountability depends heavily on political will rather than independent scrutiny, whistleblowers become essential. But where are the protections for those inside financial or regulatory bodies who may detect misuse?

Environmental oversight is another area of concern. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), tasked with safeguarding Guyana’s ecosystems, has faced repeated criticism over its handling of oil permits, flaring approvals, and environmental impact enforcement. If an internal officer identifies regulatory breaches or undue political influence, what assurances exist that they can report it without retaliation?

Even law enforcement and anti-corruption mechanisms raise difficult questions. The Special Organized Crime Unit (SOCU) and the Guyana Police Force are both central to accountability, yet public confidence in their independence and effectiveness remains uneven. When institutions themselves are perceived as politicized or selective in enforcement, whistleblowers face a stark calculation: speak and risk everything, or stay silent and survive.

This is the core institutional failure—not just the existence of wrongdoing, but the absence of safe, trusted pathways to report it.

Guyana still lacks a robust, modern whistleblower protection framework that is fully operational, widely trusted, and consistently enforced. Without strong legal guarantees—confidentiality, protection from dismissal, safeguards against harassment—whistleblowing becomes an act of personal sacrifice rather than civic duty.

And in a small society like ours, the risks are magnified. Exposure is rarely anonymous. Professional networks are tight. Political affiliations are easily weaponized. Retaliation does not always come as formal dismissal; it comes as isolation, stalled careers, and quiet blacklisting.

This is why many who know, do not speak
→But the cost of silence is far greater
→Every unreported procurement irregularity drains public resources
→Every unchecked environmental lapse threatens livelihoods
→Every undisclosed financial misstep undermines trust in how oil wealth is managed

Globally, whistleblowers have exposed massive corruption—from offshore tax evasion to billion-dollar money laundering schemes. These were not uncovered by institutions acting alone, but by individuals willing to take risks when systems failed.

Guyana must decide whether it will continue to rely on that risk—or reduce it.

The path forward is clear. Strengthen and enforce whistleblower protection laws. Establish genuinely independent reporting channels outside of political control. Empower oversight bodies like the PPC, EPA, and SARA to act decisively and transparently on disclosures. And, critically, create a culture where exposing wrongdoing is treated as public service, not betrayal.

For those inside the system who may be weighing whether to come forward: act carefully, but do not underestimate the importance of what you know. Document information lawfully. Seek independent legal advice. Understand your reporting options, whether internal, regulatory, or, if necessary, public. Protect your identity and communications.

Because in the absence of strong institutions, accountability often begins with one person choosing not to remain silent.

And in Guyana today, that choice may be the difference between governance that serves the people—and governance that escapes them.

DEMOCRACIES UNDER PRESSURE

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THE 592 GUARDIAN |EDITORIAL

ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY  ♦  UNDP DEMOCRACY REPORT 2026

The Stability Illusion: Guyana in the UNDP Democracy Mirror

A landmark regional report finds Caribbean democracies resilient. Read against Guyana’s actual record of governance failure, resource capture, and institutional decay, the picture is rather more troubling.

The 592 Guardian — Editorial Board Georgetown, Guyana  ·  June 2026

The United Nations Development Program has released its Democracy and Development Report 2026, covering Latin America and the Caribbean. In its Caribbean chapter, the report extends a qualified but meaningful endorsement: electoral democracy in the region remains stable, institutionally grounded, and internationally legitimate. Haiti and Cuba are noted as the chronic outliers. Countries like Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana appear in the V-Dem Electoral Democracy Index chart as solid performers, their trend lines sitting comfortably in the upper half of the index.

The 592 Guardian reads that chart with some unease. Because what the index measures — free and fair elections, freedom of association, elected officials, inclusive suffrage, freedom of expression — is not the same thing as what Guyanese citizens actually experience when they try to hold their government to account. Electoral proceduralism and substantive democratic governance are not synonyms. And nowhere in the Caribbean region is that gap more consequential than in a country that is now, per capita, one of the largest oil producers on earth.

Electoral proceduralism and substantive democratic governance are not synonyms — and in oil-rich Guyana, the gap between them has never been more consequential.

THE REPORT’S FRAMEWORK, APPLIED HONESTLY

The UNDP report identifies five critical areas for democratic renewal across the region. We propose to apply each of them to Guyana without the diplomatic softening that a multilateral institution is, by its nature, required to deploy.

The first priority the report identifies is restraining the conversion of economic power into political influence. It calls for ‘greater transparency, oversight and fairness in political funding‘ and warns against ‘both legal and illegal resources‘ distorting democratic competition. In Guyana, this concern is not theoretical. The administration of President Irfaan Ali and Vice-President Bharrat Jagdeo has overseen a procurement environment in which the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board has repeatedly awarded contracts — in energy, infrastructure, and services — under circumstances that independent observers have found difficult to reconcile with competitive, transparent tendering. The GPL-InterEnergy sole-source power contract, the Karpowership arrangement, and the Gas-to-Energy project’s ballooning budget variances all represent, in the UNDP’s own terminology, the conversion of economic adjacency into political arrangement.

The second priority is strengthening State capacity so that political participation is not subject to coercion by non-state actors. The report cites organized crime and violence as the central threat here, and the data it presents are sobering: the Caribbean now records a homicide rate of 27.9 per 100,000 — the highest of any region tracked, exceeding Central America. Guyana is embedded in that figure. Interior regions and border communities face security environments in which the state’s presence is at best intermittent, at worst captured. The Auditor General’s repeated documentation of unretired cash advances and phantom project expenditures across NDIA and regional administrations is not merely a fiscal footnote — it is evidence of a state that has chosen to be absent from the lives of the citizens who most need it.

WHAT THE UNDP REPORT ACTUALLY FOUND ON CARIBBEAN DEMOCRACY

→  Electoral Democracy Index scores remain high and stable for most Caribbean states

→  Homicide rates in the Caribbean (27.9/100k) now exceed Central America and are the highest globally tracked

→  Fiscal constraints and climate vulnerability create structural limits on State capacity

→  Political polarization is lower than Latin America — but the report notes this does not preclude governance capture

→  The report calls for limiting economic power’s conversion into political influence as a top reform priority

→  Figure 16 (V-Dem) shows Guyana’s Electoral Democracy score dipped notably in the 2010s with incomplete recovery

THE V-DEM LINE NOBODY IN GEORGETOWN IS DISCUSSING

The UNDP’s Figure 16 is perhaps the report’s most important visual artefact for Guyanese readers. The Electoral Democracy Index trend lines for Caribbean states chart forty years of democratic development. Guyana’s line is distinctive: it rises sharply in the 1990s following the end of the Forbes Burnham-era distortions, climbs through the Cheddi Jagan restoration and its aftermath, then experiences a visible and documented dip — precisely during the decade in which the PPP consolidated its administrative dominance before losing power in 2015. It recovers partially after 2020 but does not return to its earlier trajectory.

We note this not to score partisan points — the PNC/APNU-AFC’s behavior during the 2020 election recount was itself a democratic crisis of the first order, and one this publication has documented at length. We note it because the UNDP report’s optimistic framing of Caribbean electoral stability must be read alongside that specific curve. The curve tells a story of institutional fragility that formal electoral outcomes can temporarily mask.

Guyana’s V-Dem curve dipped precisely during the decade the PPP consolidated administrative dominance — and has not fully recovered. The UNDP’s optimism does not erase that line.

OIL, SOVEREIGNTY, AND THE ACCOUNTABILITY DEFICIT

The UNDP report’s deepest structural argument is one that Guyanese citizens should internalize urgently: the quality of democracy depends on the State’s ability to deliver tangible human development outcomes that reinforce democratic legitimacy. Where the State fails to do so, legitimacy erodes — and that erosion creates the conditions for authoritarian consolidation, whether it arrives in the form of electoral manipulation, institutional capture, or the simple exhaustion of civil society.

Guyana now generates, through the Stabroek Block, revenues that would transform virtually any small Caribbean economy. The Natural Resource Fund has been capitalized. The Gas-to-Energy project, whatever its procurement irregularities, is premised on a genuine infrastructure ambition. But the governance framework around these revenues has been systematically insulated from meaningful parliamentary scrutiny. The National Assembly — the institution that in Westminster systems is meant to be the democratic counterweight to executive excess — has been rendered functionally inert. Speaker Manzoor Nadir has presided over a chamber that has failed in its core accountability function: scrutinizing public expenditure, interrogating contracts, and holding ministers to account in real time.

The UNDP report warns explicitly against ‘the concentration of power’ and calls for ‘reinforcing institutional checks and balances and protecting the autonomy of oversight institutions.’ In Guyana in 2026, that warning reads as a diagnosis, not a prescription. The Auditor General’s reports document, year after year, a pattern of procurement irregularity, unretired advances, and audit evasion that would trigger executive crisis in any Westminster democracy with functional oversight. In Georgetown, they are tabled, noted, and forgotten.

THE ETHNIC POLITICS VARIABLE THE REPORT CANNOT NAME

There is one structural feature of Guyanese democracy that no multilateral institution can comfortably address in a regional report but which is essential to any honest accounting of the country’s democratic health: the role of ethnic bloc voting as both the foundation of PPP dominance and the ceiling of opposition viability.

The UNDP report speaks of ‘reconnecting citizens with politics by strengthening the capacity of political parties to structure competition and channel social demands in a sustained and programmatic manner.’ In Guyana, political parties have never primarily competed on programmatic grounds. The PPP’s electoral floor is Indo-Guyanese communal solidarity; the PNC/APNU’s is Afro-Guyanese communal solidarity. The result is a democracy in which electoral competition is formally free and fair but substantively structured by demographic arithmetic rather than policy debate. This is not a recent development — it is the original wound of colonial labour importation, never healed by the postcolonial state. But it is a wound that the current administration has shown no interest in healing, because ethnic loyalty is the administration’s most reliable governance asset.

Into this environment, the country is injecting oil revenues at a scale that has no precedent in Caribbean history. The risk the UNDP report identifies — economic power converting into political influence — is, in Guyana’s specific context, not a general concern about corporate lobbying. It is a concern about whether oil rents will be used to entrench ethnic patronage networks so deeply that competitive democracy becomes structurally impossible regardless of what the V-Dem index records.

In Guyana, oil revenues risk deepening not just corruption but ethnic patronage — converting a structural democratic weakness into a permanent electoral architecture.

WHAT ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM OWES THIS MOMENT

The UNDP report closes with a call for ‘broad, purposeful, and multi-stakeholder national dialogues’ to reconnect democracy, the State, and development. It is the kind of recommendation that sounds procedurally sound and is politically unenforceable. No government that benefits from the current configuration of power has an incentive to convene a dialogue designed to limit that power.

What exists — what must exist — are independent institutions willing to document the gap between the report’s framework and the country’s reality. Courts that adjudicate without deference. Auditors who report without fear of consequence. A press that publishes without calculating what the administration will accept.

The 592 Guardian does not operate under the illusion that editorial scrutiny alone is sufficient to close Guyana’s democratic deficit. But we do operate under the conviction that naming the deficit precisely — rather than allowing it to disappear behind the warm light of a V-Dem index score — is a precondition for anything that follows.

Guyana is not, by the UNDP’s reckoning, a democracy in crisis. By the reckoning of the citizens who cannot access public contracts, cannot hold their National Assembly accountable, and cannot see where their oil revenues are going, the assessment requires more work.

Guyana is not, by the UNDP’s reckoning, a democracy in crisis. By the reckoning of the citizens who cannot access public contracts, cannot hold their National Assembly accountable, and cannot see where their oil revenues are going, the assessment requires more work.

The report has given us a useful framework. The country deserves honest application of it.

 

—  The 592 Guardian  |  Independent Accountability Journalism  |  Georgetown, Guyana  —

 

WHEN DEFLECTION BECOMES THE STORY

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THE 592 GUARDIAN  |  EDITORIAL  |  JUNE 14, 2025

WHEN DEFLECTION BECOMES THE STORY

Minister McCoy, a Mildew Sandwich, and the Art of Attacking the Messenger

I.THE MILDEW SANDWICH IS NOT MISINFORMATION. IT IS EVIDENCE.

Minister of Public Affairs Kwame McCoy made a remarkable statement in recent media appearances. Commenting on photographs circulating on social media depicting what appeared to be mold-contaminated food served to schoolchildren under the National School Feeding Program, Minister McCoy declared: “We see it every day, right before our eyes, that someone could take a mildew sandwich, and upload it on their social media page. As mischievous as that is, it seeks to destroy a program of government that is important for the children of this country.”

Let us be precise about what Minister McCoy is arguing. He is not arguing that the food shown in the images was wholesome. He is not arguing that the photographs were doctored or fabricated. He is arguing that the act of sharing photographic evidence of contaminated food given to schoolchildren constitutes mischief. In the Minister’s framework, the problem is not the sandwich. The problem is that someone photographed it.

“

The Minister has not denied that children received such food. He has denied the public’s right to know about it.“

This is a curious moral position for a government minister to occupy, particularly one who sits in a Cabinet that prides itself on its commitment to child welfare. We invite Minister McCoy, and indeed every member of the Cabinet who has been silent on this matter, to answer a simple question: Would you serve that sandwich to your own children? To your nieces and nephews? To any child in your household?

If the answer is no — and we suspect it is — then the photograph is not misinformation. It is a mirror. And the Minister’s fury is not directed at falsehood. It is directed at the reflection.

II.WHERE IS THE MINISTER OF EDUCATION? WHERE IS THE NATIONAL COORDINATOR?

The conspicuous response of Minister of Education Sonia Parag on this matter is itself a statement. The National School Feeding Program falls within the ambit of her ministry’s responsibilities for child nutrition and school welfare. The public has seen the images. The public has heard Minister McCoy’s deflection. What the public has  heard is deflection and defense  from Minister Parag — no condemnation, no announcement of an investigation, no assurance that those responsible for procurement and preparation standards would be held to account.

Notably absent from the public discourse is Mr. Mahendra Phagwah, the National Coordinator of the School Feeding Program — the official most directly responsible for the operational integrity of a program that puts food in the mouths of some of Guyana’s most vulnerable children. Mr. Phagwah’s biography is that of a man who grew up in abject poverty and who, by his own account, understands intimately what it means for a hungry child to depend on a school meal. That personal history makes his public silence on this matter not merely a bureaucratic failure, but a moral one.

The 592 Guardian calls on both Minister Parag and Mr. Phagwah to make immediate public statements, to initiate a transparent investigation into the procurement, preparation, and quality control standards of the National School Feeding Program, and to ensure that accountability is applied to those responsible for placing contaminated food before children in the care of the State.

III. ON THE QUESTION OF CREDIBILITY — AND WHO LACKS IT

Minister McCoy did not limit himself to defending spoiled sandwiches. He turned his remarks upon Opposition Leader Azruddin Intiaz Mohamed, describing him as “the person with the most sordid credibility; irreparable credibility” — a man who, in McCoy’s telling, has forfeited any standing to comment on government conduct.

We apply to this characterization the very standard the Minister invokes against his critics: evidence. Minister McCoy has offered none. He has produced no court finding, no criminal conviction, no adjudicated finding of misconduct against Mr. Mohamed. In Guyana’s constitutional order — as in any democracy — a man is not guilty by ministerial declaration. Mr. Mohamed has not been charged with, much less convicted of, any offence.

The Minister’s language — “sordid”, “irreparable” — is the language of a verdict. It requires evidence commensurate with its severity. None has been provided. In its absence, what Minister McCoy has offered is not accountability. It is character assassination by press conference.

“Calling a man’s credibility sordid and irreparable, without evidence, is not political commentary. It is precisely the conduct the Minister purports to condemn.”

IV.THE PUBLIC RECORD OF MINISTER MCCOY — WHAT THE COURTS AND THE PRESS HAVE ESTABLISHED

It is in this context that the public record of Minister Kwame McCoy himself becomes not merely relevant, but necessary. The 592 Guardian does not raise these matters to engage in the same undocumented character assassination the Minister has deployed against others. We raise them because they are matters of public record, established through judicial proceedings and media reporting whose legal standing was itself adjudicated by the High Court of Guyana.

On the question of criminal conduct: The public record reflects that in March 2017, Minister McCoy was found guilty of unlawful assault and was ordered by a magistrate’s court to pay a fine of $20,000 or face one month’s imprisonment. This followed an earlier conviction in 2012, when Chief Magistrate Priya Sewnarine-Beharry found him guilty of assault and imposed a court fine. These are not allegations. These are judicial findings.

On the question of the audio recording: In 2009, media houses in Guyana reported on the existence of an audio recording in which a voice alleged to be that of Mr. McCoy was heard soliciting sexual contact from a teenage schoolboy. Mr. McCoy sought to suppress reporting on this matter through an injunction against media organizations. That injunction was subsequently discharged by the High Court, which accepted the legal defenses of public interest and justification — meaning a judge found that the public had a legitimate right to know about these allegations, and that there was sufficient basis in the material to justify their publication.

The relevant contemporaneous reporting can be found at the following sources, which remain in the public domain:

Kaieteur News, 20 September 2009: McCoy Recorded Soliciting Sex From Schoolboy
Stabroek News, 30 September 2009:Alleged Child Soliciting Tape
Kaieteur News, 16 October 2009: McCoy Dodges Media Over Sex Tape Allegations

Critically, Minister McCoy characterized the reporting as defamatory. Yet he did not pursue a defamation action against the media houses after the injunction was discharged. In law and in logic, the decision not to sue where one has proclaimed defamation invites an obvious inference — particularly when a High Court has already found the public interest defense sufficient to permit publication.

The 592 Guardian makes no finding of guilt in respect of the audio recording. No charges were ever laid, and no court has adjudicated the recording’s authenticity or the underlying allegations. What we note — and what the public is entitled to note — is the structural irony of a minister who seeks to define credibility for others while his own public record raises questions he has, to this day, not answered.

“A minister who invokes credibility as a weapon should be prepared to have his own examined — not by allegation, but by the record.”

V. TRANSFERENCE AS POLITICAL STRATEGY

There is a clinical term for the psychological maneuver at the heart of Minister McCoy’s media intervention: transference. It is the redirection of one’s own unresolved conflicts, vulnerabilities, or histories onto another person, often with accompanying aggression.

When a minister with two criminal assault convictions on his public record, and a High Court-litigated controversy involving allegations of soliciting a minor — allegations he chose not to challenge in a defamation suit — stands before cameras and declares that another man possesses “sordid and irreparable credibility,” the reasonable observer is entitled to ask: is this an assessment of the Opposition Leader, or a description the Minister is displacing from himself?

We do not suggest the Minister is incapable of commentary on others. We suggest that the vehemence and specificity of his language, directed without evidence at a political opponent, while food unfit for human consumption was being served to schoolchildren under his government’s watch, reveals a great deal about where this administration’s priorities lie.

It lies not with the children. It lies with the narrative.

VI.THE STANDARD WE APPLY — AND DEMAND

The 592 Guardian applies one standard to all public officials, regardless of party affiliation: evidence, transparency, and accountability. We have applied it here. We have distinguished between what courts have found, what the press has reported and successfully defended in law, and what remains unproven.

We call on Minister McCoy to meet that same standard. If he believes the photographs of contaminated food are fabricated, let him say so and produce evidence. If he believes Opposition Leader Mohamed’s credibility is “sordid and irreparable,” let him cite a single verified, adjudicated instance — not an allegation, not a rumor, but a court finding or established fact — to support that characterization.

Until he does, the Minister has demonstrated not that his critics lack credibility, but that he lacks the arguments to answer them.

The mildew sandwich is on the record. The question is whether anyone in this Government has the integrity to acknowledge it.

— The Editors, The 592 Guardian

ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNALISM FOR GUYANA

A System Built to Break and Then Beg

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The 592 GUARDIAN | OPINION | GTOWN,GUYANA| JUNE 2026

A System Built to Break and Then Beg

The disclosure from the Attorney General’s Chambers does more than expose a policing problem—it exposes a governing strategy.

When the State admits that constitutional lawsuits against the Guyana Police Force form “perhaps the largest portion” of its legal workload, the issue is no longer misconduct. It is architecture.

It is design. It is a system that has been allowed—if not encouraged—to drift into illegality, only to be “discovered” when it becomes useful.

 Because timing, in this case, is everything.

For years, the narrative has been one of triumph: the “fastest growing economy,” a modernizing State, a professionalized police force. Billions spent. Promotions celebrated. Statistics paraded. The image was carefully curated—disciplined, competent, improving.

Now, suddenly, we are told there is a “gap.”

Not a minor oversight, but a gap so severe that constitutional violations are spawning legal actions “almost every other day.” A gap so fundamental that basic principles—rights, procedures, lawful arrest, use of force—must now be relearned through externally supported programs.

This is not a gap. This is exposure.

And the question that demands to be asked is: why now?

The answer lies in a familiar pattern of governance—one that manufactures neglect, conceals its consequences, and then unveils the crisis at a moment of maximum strategic advantage.

 The same State that masked the deterioration now presents it as urgency. The same actors who presided over the decline now position themselves as reformers.

And conveniently, this unveiling aligns with international partnerships, donor engagement, and funding pipelines.

It is a paradox sharpened into tactic: allow dysfunction to mature in silence, then reveal it as crisis to attract intervention, financing, and institutional sympathy

 The police, in this construct, become both instrument and evidence. For years, a culture was nurtured—one that blurred the line between enforcement and excess, between authority and abuse. That culture did not emerge in isolation. It was shaped by signals from above, reinforced by selective rewards, and insulated by political narratives that prized control over compliance with the law.

Now, with the veil partially lifted, the same system points to the damage and calls for assistance.

But no amount of training funded by external partners will correct what is, at its core, a problem of intent. You cannot retrain culture while preserving the incentives that produced it. You cannot teach constitutional respect in an environment where expediency has long been rewarded over legality.

Even more troubling is what this revelation implies about past claims. If the Force was as competent and modern as advertised, why is such remedial intervention now necessary?

If crime reductions were genuine, why is unlawful policing so pervasive? If promotions and incentives were merit-based, what exactly was being rewarded?

The contradictions are no longer subtle. They are structural.

This is not reform emerging from reflection. It is exposure driven by opportunity.

And unless the underlying political calculus changes, this latest initiative risks becoming just another cycle: conceal, allow, reveal, fund, repeat.

What has been laid bare is not simply a failure of policing.

It is a method of governance.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙨 𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙂𝙪𝙮𝙖𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙤𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙪𝙩𝙡𝙚𝙩 𝙘𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙘𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙘, 𝙥𝙤𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙧𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙖𝙛𝙛𝙖𝙞𝙧𝙨.

The Mask Comes Off: Guyana’s Partisan Press and the Truth They Chose to Bury

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THE 592 GUARDIAN♦TRUTH♦ INTEGRITY♦ACCOUNTABILITY

The Mask Comes Off: Guyana’s  Partisan Press and the Truth They Chose to Bury

The 592 Guardian | Editorial

I have committed significant time contributing to Guyana’s leading news dailies — the Village Voice, Kaieteur News, and others producing rigorously researched, invaluable commentary, analysis, and accountability journalism that these outlets consistently published, particularly when it scrutinized  the government of the day. Column after column, taking the PPP/C administration to task on procurement, governance failures, democratic backsliding — printed without hesitation, sometimes featured prominently. The relationship felt professional. Principled, even.

Then I flipped the script. And the mask came off.

What the Book Says — and Why It Matters

To understand what these editors refused to print, one must first understand what is at stake.

Dr. Baytoram Ramharack’s recently published work, The Wismar Massacre: A Case of Ethnic Cleansing of Indians in Guyana, is not a polemic. It is not a political pamphlet. It is an 820-page scholarly monument, the product of two decades of archival research, transnational government and media document recovery, eyewitness accounts, oral testimonies, and legal and philosophical analysis. It is published by Xlibris and has been received internationally as a work of serious historical reckoning.

Un-silencing of an indelible stain on the Nation

At its core, the work presents a detailed historiographic account of the violence that unfolded in the Wismar-Christianburg area between May 24 and May 26, 1964 — roughly 38 hours during which approximately 3,000 Indo-Guyanese were targeted The violence resulted in the forced displacement of thousands of Indo-Guyanese residents, alongside killings, assaults, looting, and the destruction of homes and businesses. 

The official Wismar Commission Report, presented to the PNC-UF Government in January 1965, described the attacks as planned and organized. Ramharack  applies to them the human rights framework of ethnic cleansing — a characterization that is documented, legally grounded, and historically defensible.

With a commendable focus on the voices of victims, especially women, this work calls for the un-silencing of silenced history and ultimately for clear-eyed examinations of the Guyanese past and the complex relationships between Indo- and Afro-Guyanese, in the hopes of national healing. 

Critically, the author cautioned readers that an examination of what happened in Wismar should not be used by any group to claim victimhood, and that no member of a community should feel morally superior because of the atrocities committed during this tragedy.  This is a scholar extending an olive branch with one hand while holding documented evidence in the other. It is precisely the kind of work that a mature, self-aware national press should welcome into public debate without flinching.

Norton’s Letter and What It Revealed

It was into this context that Aubrey Norton, Leader of the PNC and Chairman of APNU, inserted himself with a letter published on June 10, 2026, titled — with remarkable audacity — “End This Nonsense About a Wismar Massacre.” Norton took umbrage with the use of the term “massacre” itself, even as that term has been most widely used by most Guyanese to describe the ethnic cleansing of Indians in Wismar, Christianburg, and Mackenzie in May 1964. 

Norton does not dispute that the events happened, but objects to the labeling, arguing that only a few Indians were killed as though the forced expulsion of an entire community, the burnings, the sexual violence, the looting, and the creation of thousands of refugees does not constitute an event of sufficient gravity to deserve the word.

I wrote a careful, documented response to Norton’s letter. I wrote it not as a partisan exercise, but in the explicit interest of national ethnic harmony — to correct a public misrepresentation of a historical record that is not in dispute among serious scholars, to insist that survivors deserve to have their experiences named accurately, and to invite the kind of open national conversation about reconciliation that Guyana has deferred for sixty years. I submitted that response to the same editors who have published my work consistently. I submitted it to both outlets as a deliberate test of their sincerity and their much-advertised commitment to balance.

I waited. Neither published it.

The Test, and What It Proved

Let that sit for a moment. Norton’s letter — dismissive of documented atrocity, protective of a constituency narrative, challenging the very language of historical truth — was printed.

My response, grounded in the same documented record that Ramharack spent twenty years assembling, was buried in silence. No rejection with reasons. No editorial note. Simply nothing. The piece was suppressed. The subject was suppressed with it. And the survivors, whose story I was attempting to finally bring into open national discourse, mirroring Dr. Ramharack’s purpose— were silenced once more — not this time by the architects of that violence, but by the news- outlets that claim to serve the public interest.

I am not bewildered in the way one is bewildered by the unexpected. I am bewildered in the way one is when a suspicion they hoped was wrong turns out to be entirely correct. These are not news organizations in any meaningful editorial sense.

They are ideological platforms wearing the costume of journalism. Their objectivity is conditional. Their integrity is for hire. And their courage — whatever remained of it — does not extend to publishing documented historical truth when that truth implicates the constituency whose sensitivities they are, above all else, determined to protect.

What This Pattern Means for Guyana

What these editors demonstrated by their silence is something every reader in Guyana deserves to understand plainly: the gatekeeping of public discourse in this country is not neutral. It never was. When the target is the government, the columns flow freely. When the subject is a documented historical atrocity that demands honest cross-ethnic reckoning — when the truth is inconvenient not to power but to a particular narrative of political identity — the presses go quiet.

The refusal to publish a documented, historically grounded response to a piece that had already appeared in their own pages is not an editorial decision. It is an ideological one.

It says plainly that these dailies will amplify the Norton narrative and suppress the Ramharack record — not because one is better argued or more newsworthy, but because one is safe and one is not. Because one flatters the readership and one challenges it. Because one buries the truth and one insists on bringing it into the light.

Norton’s letter accused those who use the term “massacre” of race-baiting. The editors who published that accusation and buried its documented rebuttal gave that charge their institutional endorsement. They did not act as referees. They chose a side. And in a country still hemorrhaging from wounds that have never been properly dressed, choosing a side dressed up as editorial neutrality is among the most corrosive things a press institution can do.

The Truth Was Not Buried. It Was Only Delayed.

The voices and experiences of the Indian victims have been silenced because of a historical denial of what happened in Wismar, and no Indian leader since Jagan in that period has championed them. That silence was not only political. It was also editorial. And now we know, with clarity, which newspapers in Guyana are willing to extend that silence into the present.

I submitted that piece in good faith. I will not submit another to those outlets. What I will do is say publicly, clearly, and without apology what their silence already confirmed: the Village Voice and Kaieteur News chose their tribe over their readers.

They chose a partisan script over a documented historical record. They chose to protect a constituency from discomfort rather than equip a nation for the truth.

The survivors of the Wismar Massacre — those who are still alive and the descendants who carry their silence across generations — did not survive sixty years of suppression to have their story buried again by newspapers operating in a democratic Guyana. They deserve better. This nation deserves better. And the editors who made their choice in silence will have to reckon with what that choice reveals about them.

A Call to the Wider Society: Name the Rot, Demand Better

This editorial is addressed not only to those editors, but to every reader, academic, civil society voice, journalist, and concerned citizen who has watched Guyana’s media landscape calcify along ethnic lines while presenting itself as a free press.

The readers of The 592 Guardian are among the most informed in this country. Many of you are academics, researchers, historians, and public intellectuals who have already read the piece these editors refused to run. You understand what Ramharack’s work represents — not provocation, but scholarship.

Not divisiveness, but the precondition for honest reconciliation. You know that a nation cannot heal from wounds it is not permitted to name in its own newspapers.

So this is what I am asking.

Name it publicly. When you encounter these outlets — in seminars, in faculty rooms, in civil society forums, in diaspora community spaces — name what they did. Not with anger, but with precision. They published a letter seeking to erase the documented experience of 3,000 displaced human beings. They suppressed the scholarly response. That is a fact. It should follow them.

Withdraw the credibility you extend to them. The authority these outlets exercise depends in no small part on the regard of educated, influential readers who cite them, share them, and treat them as legitimate sources of national record. That regard is now in question and should be withheld until earned back — through demonstrated editorial courage, not further selective silence.

Support platforms that publish what others will not. The 592 Guardian exists precisely because the mainstream Guyanese press has repeatedly demonstrated that it will sacrifice truth to tribal comfort. Every academic who shares our work, every professional who cites it, every diaspora reader who forwards it to a family member back home is participating in an act of genuine press freedom — the kind these dailies only pretend to practice.

Demand a public standard for media accountability. Guyana has no functioning press council with real authority. There is no mechanism by which editors can be held to account when they suppress documented historical content for ideological reasons. That gap is not an accident. 

Civil society organizations, the University of Guyana, diaspora advocacy groups, and regional press freedom bodies should be pressed to establish one — with teeth, with transparency, and with the courage to apply its standards without ethnic favor.

And finally — read Dr. Ramharack’s book. Share it. Teach it. Discuss it in your classrooms and your community meetings and your church halls and your living rooms.

 The suppressors win only as long as the suppressed material stays suppressed. 

Every copy that circulates, every seminar that assigns it, every conversation it generates is a defeat for the editorial cowardice that tried to keep it out of the national conversation.

Guyana will not achieve reconciliation through enforced silence. It will not achieve it through newspapers that selectively print the grievances of one community and quietly bury those of another. It will achieve it — if it achieves it at all — through the painful, necessary, adult work of looking at the full historical record and refusing to flinch.

The press that was supposed to help us do that work has chosen instead to obstruct it. The wider society must now do what those editors would not: hold the light steady, keep the record open, and refuse to let the truth be buried again.

The author is a objective— steadfast contributor to Guyanese public affairs journalism and the founder of The 592 Guardian.

Teachers in the Witness Box: When the Ministry Makes Educators the Food Inspectors

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THE 592 GUARDIAN ♦ OPINION ♦JUNE 2026

Teachers in the Witness Box: When the Ministry Makes Educators the Food Inspectors

Minister Sonia Parag has made teachers the food inspectors of Guyana’s National School Feeding Program. But teachers are not certified food safety professionals.

A photograph cannot detect bacteria. A video cannot measure temperature. And a signature on a “letter of satisfaction” does not make a meal wholesome. 

The Minister has placed herself in the witness box—and the questions she must answer are not about political gains, but about children’s safety.

On June 11, 2026, the Ministry of Education dismissed claims that St. Theresa Primary School in Region Six received spoiled, moldy cheese sandwiches. The ministry’s statement rests on five “facts” that collapse under scrutiny. FACT 2 declares that every meal is “videoed, photographed and inspected thoroughly by teachers,” who must then “sign a letter of satisfaction confirming that the meals meet the requisite high standards fit for our children”. FACT 3 states that since September 2025, the minister made it mandatory for caterers to provide video and photo evidence of meals being prepared.

‘This policy is accountability theater dressed as reform. It shifts professional food-safety liability onto uncertified educators while offering parents no real assurance that meals meet minimum safety, temperature, or nutritional standards.’

Teachers Are Not Certified Food Inspectors 

Minister Parag, teachers are not certified food inspectors. What training have the 5,000+ Guyanese teachers received on food-safety protocols, pathogen detection, temperature validation, or HACCP standards? Food inspection requires certified knowledge of bacterial growth zones (e.g., Salmonella, E. coli,) temperature thresholds (cold chain ≤4°C, hot food ≥60°C), cross-contamination prevention, and expiration date verification. Teachers lack the legal credentials to sign a “letter of satisfaction” for food safety.

A photo cannot detect these. Teachers are being tasked with food-safety auditing—a role that requires certification they do not possess. This is role expansion without resources, training, or legal indemnity.’

The Scientific Impossibility of Visual Checks

How does a photograph confirm that cheese sandwiches are not spoiled? Mold may be invisible in early stages. How do you verify the meal was stored at the correct temperature from caterer to classroom? FACT 2 says meals are “photographed, videoed, and inspected thoroughly,” but photos cannot measure internal temperature of food, bacterial contamination, nutritional content (protein, vitamins, calories), or moisture levels that cause mold.

‘This is documentation theater—it looks like accountability but has zero scientific basis. The ministry offers no third-party verification. The QR code for complaints is a public relations tool, not a safety mechanism.’

 Independent audits, temperature logs, and lab tests for bacterial contamination are nowhere mentioned.

Nutritional Standards Cannot Be Verified by Photos

How do teachers verify that sandwiches meet the required nutritional standards (e.g., 400–500 kcal, 15g protein, micronutrient requirements for ages 5–12)? 

Can a photo show the cheese is low-sodium, the bread is whole-grain, or the filling has adequate protein? 

The National School Feeding Program mandate includes nutritional adequacy (per FAO Guyana), but teachers are being tasked with nutrition auditing—a role that requires dietitian certification.

 Legal Liability Without Protection

When a teacher signs a “letter of satisfaction,” are they now legally liable if a child gets food poisoning? What is the due process if a caterer is removed under FACT 4? Have teachers been given legal protection or indemnity? The ministry is creating personal liability for teachers without training, certification, or appeal mechanisms. 

This is potentially unconstitutional role expansion—teachers are being made co-defendants in food-safety failures.

Parental Assurance Is Missing

 

Parents are told to trust photos and videos. But how can they be assured these checks meet minimum food safety standards? Where is the independent audit? Where are the temperature logs? Where are the lab tests for bacterial contamination? The ministry offers no transparency. The policy assumes that documentation equals safety, but it does not.

Political Deflection vs. Real Accountability

The minister claims complaints are “cheap political gains” and that meals are “forgotten in book bags for days” (FACT 5). But St. Theresa Primary reported spoiled cheese on June 11—how do you explain the discrepancy between your verification (FACT 1) and the parents’ report? (FACT 1) says cheese was served since June 9 and verified fresh by the headteacher. (FACT 5) blames parents for forgetting meals. This is contradictory deflection. The ministry is gaslighting parents while avoiding accountability for caterer breaches.

 The Time Burden on Teachers

This policy also adds significant time to teachers’ daily schedules. Inspecting 50 meals thoroughly (10–15 seconds each), photographing them (3–5 seconds each), and videoing them (5–10 seconds each) takes 16–27 minutes per lunch period. With two lunch rotations, that’s 32–54 minutes/day—roughly 2.5–5 hours per week.

For teachers already stretched thin, this is a substantial burden that directly competes with their primary mandate: delivering the school learning curriculum.

The Witness Box Is Yours

Minister Parag’s policy is not accountability—it is accountability alchemy. She is trying to turn photos into food safety, videos into nutrition audits, and teachers into certified inspectors. Children’s wellbeing cannot be secured through documentation theater.

The hard questions are clear:
What food-safety training have teachers received?
How do photos verify temperature, bacterial contamination, or nutrition?
What legal indemnity protects teachers from liability?
Where are the independent audits and temperature logs?
How do you explain the discrepancy between FACT 1 and parents’ reports of spoiled cheese?

 The witness box is yours, Minister. Answer these questions with data, not deflection.

Until you do, parents cannot be assured that their children’s meals are safe, wholesome, or nutritionally adequate. And teachers remain unfairly burdened with a role they were never trained to perform.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙨 𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙂𝙪𝙮𝙖𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙤𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙪𝙩𝙡𝙚𝙩 𝙘𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙘𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙘, 𝙥𝙤𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙧𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙖𝙛𝙛𝙖𝙞𝙧𝙨.

RUM,ROADS, AND THE PUBLIC PURSE .

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THE 592 GUARDIAN  ♦  ACCOUNTABILITY EDITORIAL

Rum, Roads, and the Public Purse

Komal Samaroo went to Capitol Hill to condemn subsidies. He forgot to mention the ones keeping his empire afloat.

The 592 Guardian Editorial Board

There is a particular brand of audacity that flourishes in the tropics. It is the audacity of the man who builds his fortune on public scaffolding, then mounts a podium to lecture the world about fair competition.

Komal Samaroo, Chairman of Demerara Distillers Limited (DDL) and the West Indies Rum and Spirits Producers Association (WIRSPA), delivered exactly that performance at a working lunch on Capitol Hill during the Caribbean Legislative Forum.

His keynote, draped in the respectable language of regional development and trade equity, was at its core a lobbying brief — a private sector executive asking the United States Congress to extend and deepen trade preferences that underpin his company’s competitive position. What the address conspicuously omitted was any accounting of the domestic public subsidies, infrastructure handouts, and state-financed inputs upon which DDL’s business model has long depended.

Before Georgetown and Washington hear any more from Mr. Samaroo about the unfairness of subsidized competition, the Guyanese public deserves a full reckoning of what he has already received from them.

He built his fortune on public scaffolding, then mounted a podium to lecture the world about fair competition.

THE GUYSUCO LIFELINE

The foundation of DDL’s rum production is molasses — the by-product of sugar refining. That molasses comes almost entirely from the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo), a state enterprise that has never, across decades of operation, been able to produce sugar at or below world market prices. GuySuCo has survived only through repeated, substantial injections of public funds. It is, by any honest measure, a permanently subsidized industry.

Yet DDL draws its primary raw material from this failing entity. Every bottle of El Dorado rum that exits the Ruimveldt bond carries within it the hidden cost of Guyanese taxpayer support for a sugar corporation that cannot stand on its own commercial feet. When Samaroo speaks of DDL’s ‘authentic provenance’ and ‘premium quality,’ he is describing a product whose cost base is artificially suppressed by state subsidy — a subsidy paid not by DDL’s shareholders, but by Guyanese citizens.

This is not a peripheral detail. It is the structural foundation of DDL’s pricing competitiveness. Without a subsidized GuySuCo supplying below-market molasses, DDL’s cost of production would look materially different. The premium narrative Samaroo markets to Washington is built, in part, on public money he has never been asked to account for.

THE MOBLISSA MODEL: INFRASTRUCTURE AS CORPORATE WELFARE

DDL’s dairy subsidiary at Moblissa offers a case study in how the Guyanese state converts public expenditure into private profit. The facility — a diversification venture by the DDL group — was accompanied by significant government infrastructure investment: roads built, a bridge constructed, tax concessions granted, and tax holidays extended.

These are not trivial inputs. Road and bridge construction in the Guyanese interior represents real capital expenditure drawn from the national budget. Tax holidays represent foregone public revenue. Together they constitute a substantial subsidy package delivered to a private enterprise whose principal shareholder is not the Guyanese public, but DDL’s ownership structure.

One searches in vain for the corporate social responsibility commitments that might justify this largesse. DDL has not distinguished itself with community investment, worker welfare programs, or environmental stewardship proportionate to the public inputs it has received. The Moblissa arrangement is the pattern made concrete: the state builds the infrastructure, a private company captures the commercial upside, and the public balance sheet absorbs the cost.

The state builds the infrastructure. The private company captures the upside. The public balance sheet absorbs the cost.

THE CAPITOL HILL PERFORMANCE

Against this domestic backdrop, Samaroo’s Capitol Hill address requires a different reading than the one its author intended. His call for reallocation of US sugar tariff-rate quotas — specifically the unused quotas assigned to Trinidad & Tobago and St. Kitts & Nevis, countries that have ceased sugar production — is not a gesture of regional solidarity. It is a market access argument that benefits, above all, those Caribbean producers still in the sugar and rum business. DDL is foremost among them.

His advocacy for extension of the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act (CBERA) is similarly self-interested. CBERA’s duty-free access provisions have provided DDL with a preferential entry point into the US market. Samaroo presents this as regional benefit; it is also, plainly, corporate benefit to his own company.

Most revealing is his denunciation of ‘tremendously subsidized products’ from the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, which benefit from the Rum Excise Tax Cover-Over and dominate roughly 80 percent of the US rum market. The complaint is legitimate as a matter of trade fairness. Its irony is total. The man objecting to US government subsidies distorting the rum market draws his molasses from a Guyanese state enterprise that has never been commercially viable without government subsidy.

 

FACT BOX: PUBLIC INPUTS TO DDL’S COMPETITIVE POSITION

GuySuCo Molasses Supply

 Primary raw material sourced from a perpetually loss-making state enterprise sustained by repeated public bailouts.
Moblissa Road & Bridge

 Government-funded infrastructure constructed to enable DDL’s dairy subsidiary operations.
Tax Concessions & Holidays

 Foregone public revenue extended to DDL subsidiary at Moblissa.
CBERA Preference (US)

 Duty-free US market access — a trade preference Samaroo now lobbies to extend.
Sugar Quota Reallocation Bid

 Samaroo calls for US tariff quotas from non-producing countries redirected to producers — primarily benefiting Guyana.
Documented CSR

 No publicly documented corporate social responsibility program proportionate to public inputs received.

THE ACCOUNTABILITY STANDARD

None of this is to argue that DDL has not built real commercial capability or that Caribbean rum does not deserve market access. It does. The region’s distillers produce genuine quality and the preferential trade architecture supporting them has historical justification rooted in colonial economic arrangements that the Caribbean did not choose.

The problem is not that DDL benefits from state support. The problem is that Samaroo presents himself and his company as exemplars of private enterprise virtue — authentic, quality-driven, unfairly disadvantaged by the subsidized competition of others — while remaining entirely silent about the public inputs that underpin his own position. That silence is not an oversight. It is a rhetorical strategy.

Caribbean people, and Guyanese people in particular, are entitled to a full accounting. They are entitled to know the value of the GuySuCo molasses supplied to DDL at below-market effective rates enabled by state subsidy. They are entitled to know the capital cost of the Moblissa road and bridge infrastructure. They are entitled to know the quantum of tax concessions and holidays extended to DDL entities. And they are entitled to know what DDL has given back — in taxes actually paid, in wages, in community investment, in environmental compliance — relative to what it has received.

Until that accounting is produced, Mr. Samaroo’s lectures on trade fairness should be received in Washington and Georgetown with appropriate skepticism. The rum is excellent. The audacity is something else entirely.

THE 592 GUARDIAN DEMANDS

1.The Government of Guyana must publish a full accounting of all public infrastructure expenditure, tax concessions, and tax holidays granted to DDL and its subsidiaries, including Moblissa Dairy, for the period 2000 to present.

2.GuySuCo must disclose the transfer price and volume of molasses supplied to DDL, and the government must commission an independent assessment of the effective subsidy value embedded in that arrangement.

3.DDL must publish an annual Corporate Social Responsibility report detailing community investment, environmental compliance, and worker welfare outcomes relative to the public inputs the company has received.

4.Any further government infrastructure support, tax concessions, or preferential arrangements for DDL entities must be subject to Parliamentary scrutiny and public disclosure before approval.

5.CARICOM trade advocacy positions advanced by WIRSPA and its chairman must disclose the direct commercial interests of the association’s principal members in any proposed policy change.

The 592 Guardian is an independent accountability journalism publication focused on Guyana. Editorial positions represent the views of the editorial board.

STATECRAFT OR STAGECRAFT

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THE 592 GUARDIAN • OPINION.

Statecraft or Stagecraft? The Manufactured Urgency of Irfaan Ali

By now, the pattern is unmistakable.

A problem surfaces—sometimes festering quietly for months, sometimes erupting into public view. Then comes the performance: the sudden convening of officials, the sharp rebukes, the threats of dismissal, the declarations that “this will not be tolerated.” The cameras roll. Statements are issued. The President appears decisive, hands-on, in command.

And then, just as predictably, the silence.

Until the next production.

This week’s installment unfolds in the healthcare sector, where President Irfaan Ali has warned senior officials that failure to meet new standards—particularly a 90 percent threshold for medicine availability—could cost them their jobs. It is a strong line. It is meant to reassure a frustrated public. But it also raises a deeper question: if the government has already invested billions, why is the system only now being threatened into performance?

Because what is being presented as reform increasingly resembles choreography.

We have seen this script before, and not long ago. At GuySuCo, pre-dawn meetings were convened with procurement officers and project engineers—summoned under the glare of urgency to explain delays and discrepancies. The optics were powerful: a President unwilling to tolerate inefficiency. But what followed those meetings? Where are the published findings? Who was sanctioned? What structural reforms emerged?

The answers remain elusive.

We saw it again with impromptu early-morning visits to construction sites—hard hats, site walks, public admonishments. A leader on the ground, demanding accountability in real time. Yet, months later, the same complaints persist: delays, cost overruns, questionable procurement practices. The spectacle is immediate; the outcomes are not.

Then came the driver’s licence fraud revelations—another moment of high-volume outrage, strong language, and promised consequences. And yet, beyond the headlines, the public is still waiting for clarity, for prosecutions, for closure.

Now, healthcare becomes the latest stage.

The introduction of the Materials Management Entity (MME), with its digital dashboards and standardized procedures, is being framed as a decisive break from past inefficiencies. But technology does not cure governance failures. It documents them—if those in charge are willing to look.

But technology does not cure governance failures. It documents them—if those in charge are willing to look.

And that is the crux of the issue.

Because the problem in Guyana’s public sector is not the absence of systems. It is the selective enforcement of them. Rules exist. Procedures exist. Oversight mechanisms exist. What is inconsistent is the will to apply them evenly, transparently, and without political calculation.

Rules exist. Procedures exist. Oversight mechanisms exist. What is inconsistent is the will to apply them evenly, transparently, and without political calculation.

Instead, what emerges is a cycle of controlled outrage.

Intervene loudly. Assign blame downward. Threaten consequences. Move on.

The President’s warning that anyone operating outside the new system will be “sent home” fits neatly into this cycle. It is a line designed to project zero tolerance. But zero tolerance, if it is real, leaves a trail—dismissals, investigations, reports, prosecutions. Without that trail, the warning is not enforcement; it is messaging.

Even the pivot to “attitude” and “customer service” reveals something deeper about this approach. By emphasizing frontline behavior, the narrative subtly shifts responsibility away from systemic weaknesses—procurement inefficiencies, inventory mismanagement, and opaque decision-making—and toward individuals with the least control over those systems.

It is a convenient redirection.

None of this is to suggest that the healthcare system does not need reform. It does. The investments are significant. The ambitions are necessary. But ambition, when repeatedly packaged as performance, begins to lose credibility.

Because governance is not what happens in moments of visibility. It is what happens in the long stretches of quiet—when there are no cameras, no speeches, no early-morning inspections.

Because governance is not what happens in moments of visibility. It is what happens in the long stretches of quiet—when there are no cameras, no speeches, no early-morning inspections.

It is in those moments that systems either function or fail.

If the new healthcare management system is to succeed, it will not be because of threats delivered at State House. It will be because procurement is transparent, inventory is accurately tracked, officials are held accountable regardless of rank, and corrective action is sustained beyond the news cycle.

That is the difference between statecraft and stagecraft.

Right now, Guyanese are being asked—once again—to trust the performance. To believe that this time, the warnings will translate into results. That this system will not go the way of previous interventions: loudly launched, quietly abandoned.

But trust is no longer built on declarations.
It is built on evidence.

And until the administration begins to produce that evidence—consistently, transparently, and without theatrics—the question will linger over every new announcement, every new system, every new warning:

Is this reform?

Or just another show?

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙨 𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙂𝙪𝙮𝙖𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙤𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙪𝙩𝙡𝙚𝙩 𝙘𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙘𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙘, 𝙥𝙤𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙧𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙖𝙛𝙛𝙖𝙞𝙧𝙨.