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

June 13, 2026/0 Comments/in Local News, Featured/by Editor

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.

Sanctioning Scarcity: Cuba’s Energy Crisis and the Limits of Punitive Policy

June 12, 2026/0 Comments/in Regional News, News/by Editor

THE 592 GUARDIAN.OPINION

TRUTH♦ ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY.

Sanctioning Scarcity: Cuba’s Energy Crisis and the Limits of Punitive Policy

The United States’ decision to impose sanctions on Cuba’s state-owned energy company, Unión Cuba-Petróleo (CUPET), has been presented as a stand for political and economic freedom. Yet, viewed through the lived realities of ordinary Cubans, it risks becoming something far more troubling: a policy that deepens hardship while claiming to oppose it.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has argued that Cuba’s government uses energy as a tool of control, privileging elites and state institutions while citizens endure chronic shortages and blackouts. There is validity in the observation that energy distribution in Cuba reflects entrenched political hierarchies. However, the critical question is whether external economic pressure—particularly on such a vital sector—can correct these distortions or merely intensify them.

Experience suggests the latter.

Cuba’s energy system is already under severe strain, constrained by aging infrastructure, limited foreign exchange, and restricted access to global fuel markets. Targeting CUPET further restricts the country’s ability to import fuel and maintain electricity generation. The immediate and predictable result is not reform, but deeper scarcity—longer blackouts, reduced industrial activity, and mounting pressure on essential services such as healthcare and food distribution.

Sanctions, in theory, are designed to influence governments. In practice, they often weigh most heavily on populations with the least capacity to absorb economic shocks.

This raises a broader issue that extends beyond Cuba. Across the world, sanctions have become a preferred instrument of foreign policy—deployed to signal disapproval, exert pressure, and pursue political change without direct military engagement. Yet their humanitarian consequences frequently blur the line between targeted measures and collective punishment.

The Cuban case illustrates this tension with particular clarity. Energy is not a luxury; it is foundational to modern life. Restricting access to it reverberates across every dimension of society, from household stability to national economic resilience. When such pressure is applied externally, it can inadvertently strengthen the very state structures it seeks to weaken, as governments consolidate control in response to crisis conditions.

There is also an unavoidable question of consistency. The global landscape is filled with energy-producing states whose governance records invite scrutiny, yet they remain integrated within international markets. The selective application of sanctions risks undermining their stated moral purpose, framing them instead as instruments shaped by geopolitical alignment rather than universal principle.

For Cuba’s citizens, the implications are immediate and tangible. Daily life becomes more uncertain, more constrained, and more precarious. The burden of geopolitical strategy is not borne in policy circles, but in darkened homes, disrupted livelihoods, and diminished opportunity.

None of this absolves the Cuban government of responsibility. Internal governance failures, inefficiencies, and political controls remain central to the country’s challenges. But external actions that exacerbate systemic fragility without offering a viable path to reform risk perpetuating the very conditions they claim to address.

If the objective is meaningful change, then policies must be judged by outcomes, not intentions. Measures that deepen deprivation while leaving political structures intact cannot credibly be described as advancing freedom.

What is needed is a recalibration—one that recognizes the limits of coercive economic pressure and places greater emphasis on engagement, accountability, and the well-being of the Cuban people. Without such a shift, sanctions on Cuba’s energy sector will stand not as a catalyst for progress, but as another chapter in a long-standing cycle of pressure and endurance, with ordinary citizens caught in between.

RUM,ROADS, AND THE PUBLIC PURSE .

June 10, 2026/0 Comments/in Local News/by Editor

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

June 10, 2026/in Local News/by Editor

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.

BEIJING’S HEADHUNTERS

June 9, 2026/0 Comments/in Local News/by Editor

THE 592 GUARDIAN

INTELLIGENCE & SECURITY • EDITORIAL

Beijing’s Headhunters

China’s military intelligence is running a global job-recruitment scam. The question Guyanese officials, journalists, and academics should be asking: have they been targeted too?

The 592 Guardian Editorial Board

THE OPERATION

The Five Eyes intelligence alliance — the domestic security agencies of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand — issued a joint bulletin this week with a message as blunt as it is alarming: China’s military intelligence services are using LinkedIn and other professional networking platforms to pose as recruiters, cultivate relationships with government officials, military personnel, journalists, and academics, and extract sensitive information in exchange for money.

The modus operandi is straightforward: a fake consulting firm with a legitimate-looking website, a recruiter with a Western name, an offer to pay between several hundred and several thousand dollars for “analytical reports” on defense, trade, or government policy — and then a pivot to WhatsApp or a “more secure platform,” where the mask begins to slip.

This is not a novel tactic. It is, however, a maturing one. And the fact that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists — whose reporters literally broke the story on China’s transnational repression network — was itself targeted using this method should strip away any remaining illusions about who these operations are aimed at.

“Fake recruiters. Real consequences. The target list is broader than most governments want to admit.”

THE ANATOMY OF A DECEPTION

The bulletin describes a predictable template. Cover companies pose as risk assessment consultancies or think tanks. They approach targets on professional platforms, request interviews, and eventually solicit written reports on topics of strategic interest to Beijing — military posture, Uyghur policy, trade intelligence, electoral dynamics. Payment arrives through third-party platforms or cryptocurrency. At no point is China mentioned by name.

When the ICIJ received such approaches, they documented the details: one “cooperation invitation” offered $300 per article plus “unlimited bonuses based on quality and client feedback.” The sender used a Western name, claimed a Singapore base, but communicated via a Hong Kong number and a different, Chinese name. Another approached ICIJ reporters specifically about China’s Xinjiang repression campaign — asking for “professional insights” on a document titled ‘The Extended Shadow: Inside Beijing’s Global Network of Transnational Repression.’

The link in that document, Citizen Lab later confirmed, was consistent with attack infrastructure used in a Chinese state-sponsored campaign targeting Uyghur, Tibetan, Taiwanese, and Hong Kong diaspora activists across three continents.

WHY THIS MATTERS FOR GUYANA

Guyana is not a peripheral target. It is, by its own government’s account, one of the fastest-growing oil economies on the planet, a nation navigating complex relationships with Washington, Beijing, and Caracas simultaneously, and home to an active journalism ecosystem probing contracts, governance, and resource allocation. That combination is precisely the kind of environment foreign intelligence services find valuable.

Chinese state and commercial interests have deepened their footprint across Guyanese infrastructure, construction, and trade. That presence is not, in itself, intelligence activity — but it creates the social and professional networks through which recruitment approaches become plausible. A “consultancy” offer to a civil servant, a journalist, or a university researcher in Georgetown is not categorically different from the approaches documented in Washington, London, or Sydney.

Neither the Ministry of Home Affairs nor the Guyana Police Force’s cyber division has issued any public advisory in response to the Five Eyes bulletin. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not commented. That silence is, to put it plainly, irresponsible.

“A $300 article fee can buy Beijing a procurement schedule, a policy draft, or a source list. The price of silence from Georgetown is harder to calculate.”

THE PATTERN OF TARGETED JOURNALISM

The ICIJ’s experience is instructive for any newsroom operating in a high-stakes accountability space. After publishing China Targets — an investigation into Beijing’s transnational repression operations — their reporters began receiving outreach from fake consultancies. The timing was not coincidental. The targeting was retaliatory and intelligence-gathering in intent.

The 592 Guardian has documented Chinese labor practices in Guyanese construction projects, raised questions about procurement opacity in Chinese-financed infrastructure, and reported on CARICOM’s fractured solidarity around Beijing-aligned positions on Cuba and Taiwan. We do not raise this to claim victim status. We raise it because our readers — civil servants, officials, academics, policy researchers, and activists — operate in precisely the environment this bulletin describes.

If you have received unsolicited outreach from a consulting firm asking you to write analytical reports on Guyanese policy, regional security, or Chinese investment for fees paid in cryptocurrency or third-party platforms: do not dismiss it. Report it.

THE FBI’S MESSAGE WAS AIMED AT EVERYONE

When the FBI posted “Applicants beware! The threat is real” on its social media channels alongside the Five Eyes bulletin, it was not speaking only to American federal employees. The bulletin explicitly identifies journalists, academics, and civil society researchers as targets — not incidentally, but strategically.

The goal, the bulletin states, is to “acquire privileged military, political and economic intelligence that can provide China with a strategic and tactical advantage.” Those framing matters. This is not about individual corruption or a rogue actor offering a few hundred dollars for a quick analysis. This is systematic, state-directed intelligence collection disguised as professional development.

And it is, by the agencies’ own account, succeeding.

THE 592 GUARDIAN DEMANDS

The Ministry of Home Affairs and the Guyana Police Force Cyber Crime Unit must issue a public advisory, drawing directly on the Five Eyes bulletin, and distribute it to government ministries, statutory bodies, media organizations, and universities.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs must formally acknowledge the Five Eyes bulletin and clarify whether Guyanese diplomatic and trade personnel have received counter-intelligence briefings in response.
All government-affiliated researchers, civil servants with procurement or policy access, and journalists employed by state media must be provided with digital security training that includes awareness of this specific recruitment vector.
The Attorney General’s Chambers must review whether existing legislation — including the Cybercrime Act — provides adequate coverage for foreign state-sponsored intelligence recruitment conducted via commercial platforms, and report publicly on any gaps.
The State Department of Public Information must not be used to dismiss or minimize this threat for diplomatic reasons. The public interest in awareness outweighs the government’s interest in not complicating its relationship with Beijing.

THE 592 GUARDIAN • Independent Accountability Journalism • Guyana

Michael Misick’s Sentence Exposes Guyana’s Shame

June 7, 2026/0 Comments/in Local News, Regional News/by Editor

Michael Misick’s Sentence Exposes Guyana’s Shame

When a Caribbean court does what Guyana will not

The sentencing of former Turks and Caicos Islands Premier Michael Misick to four years and 26 days in prison should reverberate far beyond that small territory. It is not just the ending of a long corruption case; it is a brutal reminder of how a functioning justice system looks when it finally decides that public office is not a private franchise.

For Guyana, the lesson should be impossible to ignore.

Misick, once the political boss of Turks and Caicos, was convicted on bribery charges tied to government land and development deals, after years of investigations, legal battles, and international scrutiny. The case involved sophisticated financial arrangements, hidden transfers, and the abuse of high office for personal enrichment. In the end, the court did what courts are supposed to do: it punished the powerful when the evidence demanded it.

That is precisely what Guyana has failed to do, over and over again. A familiar Caribbean disease

Guyana knows this pathology well. We have lived for years with allegations of land giveaways, questionable contracts, procurement irregularities, political favoritism, and the quiet transfer of public value into private hands. We have seen commissions, reports, declarations, denials, and carefully worded promises of reform. What we have not seen, at least not with any consistency, is accountability.

The result is a political culture in which scandal becomes routine and outrage becomes ceremonial. A case emerges, the public is shocked, the papers are full of it for a few days, and then the matter sinks into the swamp of delay, legal maneuvering, and institutional passivity. In time, the country is told to move on.

But corruption does not vanish because officials get tired of talking about it. It becomes embedded. It becomes administrative. It becomes normal.

That is the true danger in Guyana’s fiscal landscape today. The country is no longer a poor state scraping by on limited revenues. It is a petroleum-producing economy with unprecedented inflows, rising contracts, and growing opportunities for abuse. And yet the machinery of accountability still behaves as though it were managing a small colony with modest stakes and limited scrutiny.

That mismatch is dangerous.Oil money, old habits

Guyana’s oil wealth should have produced a dramatic upgrade in transparency, enforcement, and public trust. Instead, it has exposed how weak the state still is when confronted with large sums of money and politically connected actors. The more money that flows through the system, the more urgent integrity becomes. Unfortunately, the country has not matched its new fiscal reality with a stronger culture of consequence.

This is where the Misick case strikes a nerve. Turks and Caicos is not a large country with deep institutional reserves or limitless investigative capacity. Yet its institutions, after a long and difficult process, got to the point where a former premier could be convicted and jailed for corruption connected to public assets and official power. That is a landmark not because corruption exists there, but because the state refused to let status become immunity.

Guyana has not been able, or perhaps not willing, to do the same.

Too often, the powerful here enjoy the luxury of ambiguity. Allegations are treated as politics. Investigations are treated as inconvenience. Delays are treated as prudence. And eventually, public memory is expected to do the work that institutions refuse to do.

It should not be this way. Not in a country managing oil revenues. Not in a country where the cost of weak oversight is measured in wasted public funds, eroded trust, and the quiet theft of future development.

The public already knows

The average Guyanese does not need a lecture on corruption. People see it in the condition of roads, schools, hospitals, drains, and public services. They see it in contracts that raise eyebrows, in land decisions that do not pass the smell test, in public spending that seems to reward proximity more than performance. They see it in the widening distance between official claims of progress and the reality of daily life.

That is why cases like Misick’s matter. They show that corruption is not a vague moral issue. It is theft from the public purse. It is the abuse of authority that distorts development, weakens institutions, and tells ordinary citizens that the rules are for them, not for the people at the top.

Justice Rajendra Narine was right to emphasize that public office is not a license for personal gain. In Guyana, that principle should be foundational. Instead, it often sounds aspirational.

And that is the real scandal. The cost of impunity

A state that cannot punish corruption teaches the wrong lesson. It tells public officials that risk is low, consequences are distant, and political insulation may be enough to outrun the law. It tells citizens that formal institutions exist, but not necessarily for their protection. Over time, that message corrodes democratic life more than any single scandal ever could.

Guyana cannot build a credible fiscal future on selective outrage and permanent delay. Oil wealth without accountability will not create a modern state; it will create a more expensive version of the old one, with larger sums at stake and deeper public cynicism.

That is why the Misick sentence matters here. It is a regional mirror held up to Guyana’s face. It asks a simple but uncomfortable question: if a Caribbean territory can eventually bring a former premier to account for corruption, why has Guyana produced so little in the way of serious consequence?

Until that question is answered with action rather than rhetoric, the country will continue to live with the most corrosive form of political failure: the knowledge that everyone sees the problem, but no one powerful enough wants to fix it.

Public Transport .Private Abuse : The cost of weak Enforcement

June 5, 2026/0 Comments/in Local News, Business & Economics/by Editor

Fare Evasion in Reverse: How Commuters Are Being Overcharged

The ongoing problem of fare overcharging in the public– transportation system is not a mystery of weak regulation—it is a clear and continuing failure of enforcement. The laws exist. The fare structures are approved. The offences are defined. Yet, on any given day, commuters are still being charged above the legal rates, often in plain sight and without consequence.

his is not a gap in policy; it is a breakdown in compliance and accountability.

Minibus operators who overcharge or fail to display approved fare charts are not operating in a grey area. They are in breach of the law. The requirement to display fares is not optional, and neither is adherence to approved rates. These are basic conditions of operating within a regulated public service. When these rules are ignored without penalty, the system effectively signals that enforcement is negotiable.

Recent guidance encouraging commuters to report violations at any police station is a welcome step, but it also raises an uncomfortable question: why has this level of accessibility not been standard practice all along?

For years, the burden of enforcement has quietly shifted onto passengers—many of whom lack the time, resources, or confidence to pursue formal complaints. The result has been predictable: widespread underreporting and a culture of normalized overcharging.

Lowering the barrier to reporting is necessary, but it is not sufficient.

A reporting mechanism only has value if it leads to action. Commuters will not engage with the system if complaints disappear into administrative silence or fail to produce visible outcomes. Enforcement must be consistent, transparent, and consequential. Fines, suspensions, and other penalties must not only be applied but seen to be applied. Without this, the current approach risks becoming another procedural reform that fails to alter behavior on the ground.

Equally troubling is the ongoing agitation within sections of the minibus sector for increased fares, even as existing regulations are routinely disregarded. Operators cannot credibly demand adjustments to fare structures while simultaneously ignoring the legal framework that governs them.

Compliance is not conditional. It is the baseline requirement for participation in a regulated system.

If there is a legitimate case for fare increases—driven by fuel costs, maintenance, or broader economic pressures—then that case must be made through established channels. Until such adjustments are formally approved, the current rates remain binding. Any unilateral increase is not negotiation; it is exploitation.

At its core, this issue is about more than fares. It is about the credibility of regulation and the everyday experience of citizens navigating essential services. When passengers are routinely overcharged and fare charts are absent, the message is clear: rules exist, but enforcement is optional. That perception erodes public trust not only in the transport system but in governance itself.

Public education campaigns, while important, cannot substitute for enforcement. Commuters should be informed of their rights, but they should not be expected to police the system in place of the authorities responsible for regulating it. The obligation to uphold the law rests squarely with those tasked to enforce it.

If this renewed push for reporting is to mean anything, it must be matched by visible, sustained action. Every complaint must be treated as a test of institutional credibility. Every violation left unaddressed reinforces the very behavior the law is meant to deter.

The solution is neither complex nor elusive. Enforce the law consistently. Penalize violations decisively. Ensure fare transparency in every vehicle.

Until that happens, overcharging will persist—not because it cannot be stopped, but because it has not been treated with the seriousness it demands.

Striking Drivers

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT IRFAAN ALI

June 3, 2026/0 Comments/in Featured, News/by Editor

♦A 592-GUARDIAN SPECIAL APPEAL♦

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT IRFAAN ALI.

Re: “APPEAL FOR CLEMENCY”

His Excellency Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali

President of the Co‑operative Republic of Guyana

Office of the President

Georgetown, Guyana

Dear Mr. President,

We at the 592 Guardian write to you not only as citizens concerned with justice, but as individuals deeply invested in how Guyana defines fairness, proportionality, and national gratitude.

The recent sentencing of former professional boxer Howard “Battersea Bomber” Eastman to 48 months’ imprisonment for possession of 265 grams of cannabis has stirred unease among many who believe that justice must be both lawful and humane. While the court has exercised its authority within the framework of existing legislation, this case presents an opportunity for executive reflection and, We respectfully submit our request for compassionate intervention.

Mr. Eastman is not an ordinary defendant. For two decades, from 1994 to 2014, he carried Guyana’s flag into international arenas, competing at the highest levels of professional boxing. In doing so, he elevated this country’s profile, inspired countless young Guyanese, and contributed to a legacy of national pride that transcends sport.

It is true that the court noted a prior offence, and that cannot be ignored. However, justice is not only about punishment—it is also about proportionality, rehabilitation, and context. A four-year custodial sentence for a non-violent cannabis offence, in a global environment where many jurisdictions are moving toward decriminalization or alternative sentencing, raises serious questions about whether our laws—and their application—are aligned with modern standards of justice.

Moreover, Mr. Eastman’s current circumstances—unemployment, instability, and apparent social vulnerability—point less to criminal enterprise and more to a man in need of structured support and rehabilitation. Incarceration alone is unlikely to resolve these underlying issues.

Your Excellency, this appeal is also grounded in the spirit of your administration’s recently articulated commitment to reparative justice. That initiative, as understood, seeks to confront structural inequities, correct historical imbalances, and advance a more humane and equitable system of judicial governance. In that context, the continued imposition of severe custodial penalties for low-level, non-violent narcotics offences appears misaligned with the broader philosophy of restorative and corrective justice.

A measured act of clemency in this case would therefore not stand in contradiction to government policy, but rather in affirmation of it. It would demonstrate that reparative justice is not confined to rhetoric or history but is actively shaping present-day decisions—especially where individuals from modest or vulnerable circumstances face punitive outcomes that may outweigh both the offence and the public interest.

The Constitution vests in your office the authority to grant clemency in appropriate cases. This is one such moment where mercy would not undermine justice but rather enhance it. A commutation of sentence, or conditional pardon, paired with mandatory rehabilitation, community service, or structured reintegration support, would send a powerful message: that Guyana is capable of both enforcing its laws and exercising compassion.

Such an act would also signal a willingness to re-examine our approach to low-level narcotics offences—an area where policy reform is increasingly urgent, both regionally and globally.

This is not merely about one man. It is about how a nation treats those who once brought it honor, and how it evolves in its understanding of justice.

We respectfully urge you to consider intervening in this matter.

Respectfully

The 592 Guardian.

WHILE GUYANA DROWNS THE PRESIDENT RIDES RAPIDS

June 3, 2026/0 Comments/in Local News/by Editor

Op-Ed / Administrative Accountability

While Guyana Drowns,

the President Rides Rapids

Photographs and video evidence place President Irfaan Ali and senior cabinet ministers at Teperu Falls — frolicking in whitewater — as thousands of Guyanese citizens entered their second consecutive week trapped in floodwater. This is not merely tone-deafness. It is dereliction.

The Editors
The 592 Guardian · Independent Accountability Journalism

The images do not lie. While sewage-laced floodwaters crept into the homes, food stores, and lungs of Guyanese families across the country, President Irfaan Ali — dressed in a black-and-yellow jersey bearing the number 44, the same jersey he has turned into a political brand — was photographed laughing in the rapids at Teperu Falls. Cabinet ministers flanked him. Security details stood watch. Government vehicles presumably idled on dry ground not far away. A day out. A jaunt. A state-funded excursion, paid for by the very citizens now wringing out their mattresses and boiling their drinking water.

Let that sink in. More than a week of unrelenting rainfall. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of families displaced. Crops destroyed. Livelihoods erased. Children sleeping in shelters or on elevated furniture. And the head of state chose this moment — not to coordinate relief, not to walk affected communities, not to convene emergency cabinet — but to take to a waterfall.

The government did not fail to know about the floods. It chose — consciously and demonstrably — to look elsewhere.

— The 592 Guardian Editorial Board

The Evidence on the Record

Three photographs — obtained and published here —

place Ali and his entourage at Teperu Falls during the active flood emergency. The images show the President smiling in rushing water alongside individuals identifiable as part of his official retinue. A separate image shows men standing at the base of what appears to be a flood-surge cascade at a building, documenting the extraordinary volume of water hammering infrastructure during this same period. The juxtaposition is not accidental. It is damning.

These images circulated on social media before any official acknowledgment that the President had been at the falls. There was no press release announcing an “inspection of waterways.” There was no national address from that location. There was no pretense, however transparent, that the visit served a public purpose. It was, by all available evidence, recreational — and undertaken during a declared or de facto national weather emergency.

Documented Conditions During the Excursion

Flooding had persisted for more than seven consecutive days across multiple administrative regions at the time these images were taken
Hundreds of households reported inundation of ground floors, with furniture losses and food spoilage documented by civil society organizations
The Ministry of Health had not issued an updated waterborne disease advisory despite standing flood conditions — conditions that reliably produce leptospirosis, gastroenteritis, and typhoid exposure risk
No formal emergency declaration, accelerated relief allocation, or presidential address to flood-affected communities had been recorded in the week prior to the Teperu Falls trip
Government drainage infrastructure in coastal areas — long identified by engineers and opposition voices as critically underfunded — had again proven inadequate, as it does each rainy season

Not Insensitivity — Indifference

Some will reach for the charitable reading: that the President is entitled to personal time, that leaders cannot be on call every waking hour, that a brief outing does not constitute abandonment of duty. We reject this framing categorically — not out of partisanship, but out of proportion. There is a threshold of emergency below which a head of government may reasonably decompress. A flood that has displaced citizens for over a week is not that threshold. It is far above it.

The appropriate comparison is not a leader who takes an evening off during routine governance. The appropriate comparison is a fire chief photographed at a swimming hole while an apartment block burns. The appropriate comparison is a hospital administrator found at a resort while his wards overflow. Context is everything. And the context here — two weeks of flood disaster, a population in distress, a government conspicuously absent from relief coordination — transforms what might ordinarily be a private matter into a public accountability issue of the first order.

Furthermore, this was not a solitary escape. Cabinet ministers were present. This means that a portion of the executive branch collectively decided that a recreational waterfall trip was an appropriate use of their time and their public mandate. The word for this is not “oversight.” The word is contempt.

What the People Were Doing	What the Government Was Doing
Evacuating ground floors; carrying children and elderly relatives to upper levels or shelters	President Ali photographed laughing at Teperu Falls rapids with cabinet entourage
Losing refrigerated food, medicines, and household goods to contaminated floodwater	No emergency food and supply mobilization announcement during the excursion period
Navigating waterborne disease risk — leptospirosis, typhoid, skin infections — from prolonged exposure to standing water	Ministry of Health issued no updated advisory; no disease prevention campaign deployed
Calling on government for drainage relief that has been promised — and deferred — across multiple budget cycles	Structural drainage investment remains chronically underfunded relative to oil revenue inflows
Filing damage reports and insurance claims with little expectation of compensation	No emergency compensation framework or rapid-response household grant announced

The Fiscal Double Standard

Guyana is, by the PPP/C government’s own triumphant accounting, a petro-state ascending. Oil revenues are flowing. The Stabroek Block is producing. The Natural Resource Fund exists, notionally, to buffer the citizenry against precisely the kind of shocks — including infrastructure failure and natural disaster — that floods represent. And yet Guyanese citizens cannot get their drainage channels dredged. They cannot get flood barriers erected. They cannot get timely emergency relief that matches the scale of the crisis. What they can do is watch their President enjoy a whitewater excursion on the public dime.

The security, transport, and logistical costs of a presidential outing are not trivial. Every convoy that carried officials to Teperu Falls was resourced by the treasury. Every hour of security detail time is public expenditure. This is not an accounting exercise — it is a values exercise. A government reveals what it values by how it allocates both money and attention. This government, in the midst of a flood emergency, allocated both to a waterfall trip.

Oil revenues flow. The Natural Resource Fund exists. And Guyanese citizens cannot get their drainage channels dredged.

— The 592 Guardian Editorial Board

Administrative Neglect is Not a Weather Event

Let us be precise about what we mean by administrative neglect — because governments routinely hide behind the language of natural disaster to deflect accountability for the failures that make natural events catastrophic. Rain falls everywhere. Flooding is a political choice. It is the consequence of drainage infrastructure deferred, of coastal management underfunded, of early warning systems unbuilt, of emergency relief protocols unenforced.

Guyana has flooded before. It will flood again. What changes with each successive government is the degree to which the state has invested in reducing the harm — and the degree to which the leadership treats the suffering of coastal and inland communities as a genuine emergency rather than a seasonal inconvenience to be managed with press releases and photo opportunities. This administration, under Ali, has consistently chosen the latter.

The citizens who are now wading through contaminated water are experiencing what policy analysts call “double jeopardy” — first, the harm of the flood itself; second, the harm of a state apparatus that cannot or will not mitigate that harm in real time. They did not choose their geography. They did not build the failed drainage infrastructure. They did not direct the oil revenues away from resilience investment. Their government did — the same government that, when the crisis peaked, chose a waterfall.

The Indictment — Four Counts of Failure

Dereliction of Emergency Duty: President Ali and cabinet ministers absented themselves from active flood emergency response to undertake a recreational excursion at Teperu Falls. No public interest justification has been offered. None exists.
Chronic Infrastructure Neglect: The flooding that afflicts Guyanese communities each wet season is not an act of God. It is the predictable consequence of decades of deferred drainage investment — a deferral that has continued, inexcusably, through years of oil revenue accumulation.
Public Health Abandonment: No timely waterborne disease advisory. No accelerated health outreach to flood-affected communities. No emergency pharmaceutical pre-positioning announced. Citizens were left to assess their own disease exposure risk without government guidance.
Fiscal Contempt: Taxpayer funds paid for the security, transport, and time of a presidential recreational outing during an active humanitarian crisis. This is not a neutral expenditure. It is a statement of political priorities — and the statement is damning.

What Accountability Requires

We do not call for resignation on the basis of a photograph alone. We call for something harder: a full and honest accounting. The President should be required to explain — publicly, specifically, and without deflection — what emergency response actions he personally directed during the period in which these images were taken. He should be required to explain what government resources were allocated to flood relief in the preceding two weeks, and whether those allocations were commensurate with the documented scale of the crisis. He should be required to explain when the national drainage and flood resilience infrastructure will be funded at a level consistent with Guyana’s oil revenues.

The National Assembly should convene an emergency session to examine government flood response — not a congratulatory briefing on oil sector performance, but a genuine audit of what was done, what was not done, and what the citizens in the flood zones are owed. Civil society organizations and opposition parliamentarians should press these questions without relent until answers are placed on the public record.

And the Guyanese public should understand, clearly, what these images tell them. They tell them that their President, in their hour of need, chose recreation. They tell them that the cabinet, in their hour of need, chose recreation. And they tell them that without sustained, organized, unrelenting political pressure, these choices will be made again — the next rainy season, and the one after that.

The water recedes. The accounting must not.

This editorial was prepared by the 592 Guardian Editorial Board.
The 592 Guardian is an independent Guyanese accountability publication committed to transparency, resource governance, and the public interest. We accept no government advertising. We take no editorial direction from state actors.

FREEDOM DELAYED

May 31, 2026/0 Comments/in Local News/by Editor

Freedom Delayed:

The Unfinished Promise of Independence

OPINION

BY: JAI LALL

This country of many waters and races is observing its 60th independence anniversary since the British flag, the Union Jack, was lowered at midnight on the 25th May 1966 and the Guyana flag, the Golden Arrowhead, was raised on the 26th May 1966. Those were the days when sugar was king of the land and nicknamed “gold dust.” Today, oil is the queen of the sea, and its pet name is “liquid gold.” Uniquely, Guyanese are enjoying back-to-back holidays with Eid Al-Adha, the following day.

From the inception, “gold” cradled the foundation for Guyana’s name, built its growth for fame, and its “discovery” to develop its fortune. The searching, sighting, visiting, landing, settling, and colonizing of “Guiana” was as a quest to find the “Golden City of El Dorado,” with a famous myth that villages with houses were made of gold.

British Guiana has metamorphosed from a British colony ruled previously by the Dutch and invariably occupied by the French and Spanish, thus tainted with a European intrusion, to a sovereign state known as Guyana and then to a Republic, now referenced to as “The Co-operative Republic of Guyana.” But, from inception, it was the original home of the Indigenous inhabitants which comprised a number of different tribes but popularly and collectively referred to as the “Amerindians,” who populated the hinterland, in “The Land of Many Waters.”

After the arrival of the European pioneers, they pulverized the land to reap and rape for profits. This was followed by the infusion of African slaves, the indentured Indian laborers and a small influx of Portuguese and Chinese. The eventual co-habitation of the six races, reproduced a seventh race genesis as a result from “cross-pollination.”

From exploration to exploitation, a new community evolved from this Guyanese society to rise to a significant level from a breeding ground, to birth another race of “mixed races” and “crossbreeds” identified as “dougla.” Guyanese are still in disbelief but cannot forget Burnham’s evil intention of the real purpose behind the formation of National Service. Having set aside our diversified background, known as Guyanese, now, we are forecasting an identity of “One People.”

Mind you, most Guyanese are wary of the comparable combination of the citizens’ contrasting cultures, which cement a comfortable compatibility not to compromise the nation’s goal of gluing as “One Nation.”

But differences and indifferences with options and opinions, actions and activities and our way of life of why we live how we live, will always circumvent any given standard for commonality.

Despite any great purpose, there are those who will obviate any good intention. The ruling Government led by a roaring President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali and the popular People’s Progress Party/Civic, is perpetually pronouncing on their productive performances and the profitable achievements which will permeate a promenade to produce the aspiration of working together to mold a “One Destiny,” paving a pampered path with peace, progress and prosperity.

Notwithstanding this erudite motto with the classic slogan, “One People, One Nation, One Destiny,” these exponential factors bear an existential quest to resolve an equation for:

A vision not to look through the lens of ethnicity as a redress for liberty; a promise to forgo using violence to instigate disruption to address equality; and a challenge to work together to bridge harmony in fraternity against racism.

Having traversed the treacherous journey from forced exits to coerced exits, the wind changed direction from slavery to freedom and then, indentureship to liberation. The tide having sailed in the colonizers, changed course from independence to a Republican state. In the travesty for overnight self-governance, we trailed on a trial of conspired deception to avoid alleged

Communism. The turmoiled water provided a storm to brew dictatorship before being relieved of socialism to rely on capitalism.

Political leaders from the past have manipulated and mutilated the richness of this land via disgusting measures, deceptive means and disguising intentions, denying the people the true results from the ballot boxes with the aid of the British and American cooperation, Guyanese collation and conspirators’ collaboration controlling rigged elections.

Nationalization has seen the rude awakening of a crude, new leader imitating the image of a “white, colonial master,” ashamed of his “innate inhibitions.”

A man who professed to be a General, rode on a horse with a cigar as his horse trotted along the road in his “Hope” estate, ordering his “serfs” to obey his command or, bear the brunt of his whip as he unleashed violence, vindication and vengeance! A man who can make Satan cry and his sister weep, was one to fear and not fathom.

The man who thought he would rule for life, aligned himself with Jim Jones and the 918 mass-murders in Jonestown, Rabbi Washington’s House of Israel and the murder of Father Darke and was the intellectual architect who engineered WPA’s Dr. Walter Rodney’s murder. But those sinister events played second fiddle to the horror of the “Wismar Massacre,” the burning and looting in Georgetown on Black Friday and the harsh 135 and 80 days GAWU strikes. The “best orator” stood silent to speak against indignity, injustice and insanity!

Guyana’s independence gave us poverty, nakedness and corruption, all enwrapped, enveloped and entrapped in the name of freedom for the small man to enter the dream of being the real man while the privileged, the protected and the prioritized ones were permitted to enjoy the platter from the luxury of a golden plate!

The infancy stage of Guyana’s freedom fermented a mass exodus of migration from all races, banning of essential food items, the creation of long and lasting “Guy lines,” the freezing of wages, the ‘mistreatment’ of females workers, the use of workers and materials for personal gains, the misuse of the armed forces, the evaporation of foreign currency, the abuse of state properties, and to crown it all, the PNC Party card’s usage as a Passport to freedom, freebies and feasts for the few, fortunate figures!

“Independence did not immediately free all and sundry. The fight for real freedom continues as, hopefully, will this article”.