King Charles— no apology, no hospitality

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA 

  King Charles— no apology, no hospitality

OPINION BY : GHK LALL October 2026

If no apology for serial crimes is so hard to make, then I can only imagine the resistance to calls for reparations.If there is nothing to apologize for, then what is there to make reparations about?

The issue is that ‘odious institution’ slavery.  Though centuries later, the stench grows stronger.  Of man’s inhumanity against man.  Specifically, the white man’s crimes against the Black man.  Those are not some slivers of an overwrought imagination.  Those crimes are real as in millions of dead, a continent hemorrhaged, and a people still trying to rise from the destruction done to it. 

If there is so much difficulty in extending a sincere apology for those monstrous crimes, then does any other apology for any depravity mean anything?

When Buckingham Palace can put on its best Oxbridge accents, and declare ‘no apology’ for slavery, then why is Guyana welcoming King Charles III?  If he can’t humble himself, then he should be quietly counseled to find hospitality somewhere else.

Whenever I think that the world has progressed, it hasn’t.  Whenever I harbor ideas that the essence of man has changed, there is fooling of myself.  Beside the warm embraces, the plummy smiles, lurk some old, venomous snakes.  It is known that blood attracts sharks. 

Oil attracts scoundrels at every level, from every walk, and all cardinal points. 

Frankly, some of the people who shake the hands of Pres Ali and Vice President Jagdeo would soon as spit on them.  Old prejudices die hard, if at all.  I try to drum these realities in their heads, only to come up short every time.  They believe they are beloved. 

It’s the black gold, my brothers, and the sooner that there is awareness of that magic, and the manipulators that come to Guyana’s doors, the better this country is for it.

I suppose that in the eyes of Buckingham Palace, an apology for slavery would be bad form set a ghastly precedent, and just not done.  Absolute rot!  In the mind of Buckingham Palace, a n—a is always a n—a and a c—e from the subcontinent is still a c—-e.  I have a challenge for white people and nonwhite folks.  What else can it be?  When a man can’t look another man in the eye and bring himself to utter a heartfelt apology, then somewhere in that formula is one who is not seen as a man, but as a lesser life form.  0ne unworthy of basic human dignity.  One underserving of a fundamental human consideration.  I am sorry.  On behalf of the British people, I extend a full and unqualified apology to the descendants of slaves treated so heinously by our forebears.

If that kind of respect does not exist, then that man or woman should not be in my house, in my space, in my land.

It goes without saying that calling upon Pres Ali and Vice President Jagdeo to stand tall for once, to stand straight, is asking too much.  I know a lost cause when I see one.  When Guyana was destitute and ragged, people walked over it.  Now that Guyana is rich and everyone wants to win its hand, to smell its perfume, to taste its riches, then those must count for something.  if the man enslaved cannot be given an apology, then what about the lesser crimes committed against the indentured of Guyana? 

Indeed, there are the impotent in Guyana who paste silly grins across their faces, when the kicks to the nuggets rain like before, only in a more velvety, silky manner nowadays.

Those who treat my brothers right, do justice by them, they are my brothers, too.  Those who hide behind clever words and postures, play their believed sophisticated games, they I keep far from, don’t want to be anywhere around me and my kind. 

To the British monarchy, this I deliver: no apology for slavery, then expect nothing resembling hospitality.  Guyana doesn’t need Buckingham Palace.  Buckingham Palace needs Guyana.  Slavery is still alive and well.  It’s not called that, just not recognized as being such.

The Presidential Bottleneck

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 592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

 The Presidential Bottleneck

President Irfaan Ali’s September 28 decision to summon Regional Executive Officers, Regional Education Officers and Regional Health Officers from all ten regions to State House, and to issue instructions, shows an urgency to fix problems. It also raises a harder question about his governing style. Does direct presidential intervention strengthen public administration, or does it build a system in which every serious problem must eventually reach the President’s desk?

On the evidence, the second is already happening.

The decision to summon these respective  Regional   Officers from all ten regions to State House reflected an understandable urgency to remove service-delivery bottlenecks. He heard regional concerns, issued “on-the-spot” instructions on education and healthcare, and reviewed digital systems said to have improved the distribution of medicines.

Citizens want results, not bureaucratic excuses. Yet the meeting also raises a more difficult question: does direct presidential intervention strengthen public administration, or does it reinforce a system in which every serious problem must eventually reach Georgetown—and the President’s desk?

The evidence suggests the latter risk is already emerging.

Repeated escalation

The September 28 meeting was not an isolated intervention. On May 13, President Ali and Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo met Cabinet members, permanent secretaries, REOs, procurement officials and regional accounting officers, warning that public office is a “sacred trust” and that public resources must be managed lawfully.

On September 8, while President Ali was overseas, Vice President Jagdeo again convened ministers, permanent secretaries, REOs, accounting officers and officials of semi-autonomous agencies. The agenda included procurement compliance, financial management, payment systems, transparency and consequences for breaches of procedure.

Twenty days later, the President himself summoned regional officers to address health and education bottlenecks.

Three top-level interventions involving substantially the same administrative class in less than five months should not be seen only as proof of vigilance. They may also reveal a public-administration system in which normal management, monitoring and accountability mechanisms are not working well enough at the ministry and regional levels.

A functioning system should not need repeated summonses to Georgetown before procurement rules are followed, medical supplies reach facilities, school needs are addressed, or routine regional problems are cleared. These matters require ordinary systems of administration: clear service standards, firm timelines, accountable accounting officers, internal audits, disciplinary procedures and public reporting on whether commitments were met.

Otherwise, the message to officials is simple: wait until the President, Vice President or a senior minister intervenes.

The regional question

The same concern arises below the regional level.

In August, President Ali led a Presidential Outreach in Region One with ministers, technical officers and the Barima-Waini Regional Democratic Council. Residents were invited to raise concerns directly in Moruca, Matarkai and Mabaruma. Such engagement is not inherently objectionable. Government must listen to citizens.

But presidential outreach must supplement local government, not replace it.

Guyana’s Constitution treats local democracy as a vital part of the country’s governance structure. Article 71 requires a system of local democratic organs through which citizens can participate in managing and developing their communities. Article 73 provides for Regional Democratic Councils elected by the people of the respective regions.

Article 75 states that local democratic organs are to be autonomous and empowered to make decisions binding on their agencies, institutions, communities and citizens. Article 77 requires regional development programs to be integrated into national plans, with central government allocating resources for their implementation.

That is not a constitutional design for regions to operate as field offices awaiting instructions from Georgetown. It is a design for elected regional institutions with their own mandate, responsibilities and authority.

The Regional Executive Officer is the region’s administrative and accounting officer and clerk to the RDC. But the RDC’s legitimacy comes from the voters of the region. That distinction matters.

When residents must await a presidential visit to secure action on water, electricity, drainage, school repairs, health services, roads or community facilities, the public learns that local institutions may exist but real authority lies elsewhere. Regional and local officials may learn the same lesson: defer difficult matters upward and wait for a political intervention.

Decentralization in practice

This sits uneasily with President Ali’s own stated commitment to decentralization. In January 2025, he announced steps to decentralize medical-supply management to the regions. In November 2025, he told newly appointed regional leaders that governance could not rest in a single center and needed to be decentralized, responsive and empowered at the regional level.

That principle is sound. But decentralization cannot be ceremonial.

A decentralized system requires regional institutions that can make routine decisions, manage service delivery and account publicly for results without waiting for presidential involvement. Ministries should establish national standards, provide funding, monitor performance and intervene where a region repeatedly fails. They should not become the default route for every local difficulty that attracts political attention.

Practical decentralization would include:

♦ Regional authorities with clear power to resolve routine service-delivery matters.

♦RDCs that set priorities, approve programs and hold regional administrators accountable.

♦Public reporting, by region, on medicine stocks, school-maintenance backlogs, procurement timelines, water complaints, road works and citizen grievances.

♦Enforceable consequences for negligence, non-compliance and poor performance through regular administrative procedures.

The point is not that the President should be detached from citizens’ concerns. It is that presidential intervention should be exceptional, not essential.

 Independent institutions

The same principle applies to constitutional commissions and other oversight bodies.

The Constitution provides that, unless otherwise stated, commissions exercising constitutional functions are not subject to the direction or control of any person or authority. This protection applies to bodies including the Elections Commission, Judicial Service Commission, Public Service Commission, Teaching Service Commission and Police Service Commission.

The Public Procurement Commission is expressly established as an independent and impartial body. Its constitutional role includes monitoring public procurement to ensure that it is lawful, fair, transparent, competitive and cost-effective.

These bodies are not executive departments. The President, Vice President and ministers may lawfully call for public accountability, appoint persons where the Constitution allows, and insist that agencies comply with the law. But they cannot direct an independent constitutional body in the exercise of its constitutional functions.

A public instruction to an independent body presents a problem either way. If the body was already legally obliged to act, the instruction is unnecessary. If it acts because a political office-holder instructed it to do so, its independence is weakened.

Weak checks

The risk of over-centralization grows when the institutions meant to check executive power move slowly or lack practical force.

The delayed work of the Constitutional Reform Commission is one example. Parliament enacted the Constitutional Reform Commission Act in 2022, yet public consultations reportedly began only in July 2026, after years of budgetary allocations and limited visible public output.

That delay does not establish illegality or misconduct. It does show how weak institutional tempo becomes an accountability problem. When Parliament, commissions and oversight bodies move slowly, executive intervention becomes more visible, more decisive and more politically dominant.

The answer is not to ask the President to ignore public needs. It is to ensure that every institution performs the work the Constitution and the law already assign to it.

The real test

President Ali’s hands-on style can generate rapid decisions and reassure citizens that someone is listening. But responsiveness is not the same as institutional strength.

The test is not how many problems are solved after a summons to State House, a ministerial visit or a presidential outreach. The test is whether the next problem can be solved by the regional and local institutions already empowered to address it.

A strong presidency should be capable of fixing a broken system. A stronger presidency leaves behind institutions that do not need to be fixed by the President every time they fail.

The End Does Not Justify the Means

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

 

OPINION BY: Hem Kumar  October 2026

Once the Government declares an objective urgent, transparency, procedure and independent scrutiny are treated as inconveniences. Guyana must refuse that bargain before it hardens into habit.

A philosophy is taking root in Guyana’s governance, and citizens must name it before it becomes normal. When the Government calls an objective urgent, desirable or politically important, almost any method of reaching it can be defended.

We want development, so scrutiny must not slow projects. We want oil revenues spent quickly, so procurement rules must flex. We want infrastructure, so questions about cost, competition, technical competence and value for money are dismissed as obstruction. We want answers on the MV Barima, so a Commission of Inquiry proceeds while the vessel, the most important piece of physical evidence, remains at the bottom of the river.

That is not how accountable government works. 

“The real test is not the objective a Government announces. It is whether the objective is pursued lawfully, transparently, and with the public purse protected.”

THE LABEL IS NOT THE LICENSE

Every Government says it wants development, housing, jobs, roads, hospitals, security and prosperity. None has ever announced that it wants waste. A democracy is protected by the discipline of method, not by the nobility of stated goals.

Yet there is an assumption that the word “development” entitles an administration to suspended skepticism. Oversight bodies are to accept limited information. Journalists are to stop asking. Taxpayers are to wait for assurances that everything is under control.

Public money is not Government money. State assets are not party assets. Oil wealth is not a blank cheque. Public institutions do not exist to ratify decisions taken behind closed doors.

DEVELOPMENT DOES NOT MEAN FEWER QUESTIONS

Guyana is an oil-producing State with fast-growing expenditure, increasingly complex infrastructure programs and unprecedented access to national revenue. That should have produced stronger procurement safeguards, stronger institutions and fuller disclosure.

The risk is that oil wealth is instead normalizing a culture of urgency without accountability.

Projects are announced at breathtaking speed. Contracts surface in fragments. Costs rise and details are withheld. Questions are labelled partisan, and critics are accused of opposing development.

The arithmetic of oversight runs the other way. The more money a Government controls, the greater the need for scrutiny. The faster contracts are awarded, the stronger the case for disclosure. The more urgent a national project, the more the public needs to see who is being paid, why they were chosen, what they must deliver and whether Guyana is getting value for money.

Every dollar wasted is a dollar unavailable for hospitals, schools, drainage, roads, housing and water.

◊When the State overpays, taxpayers pay.

◊When procurement is opaque, citizens cannot tell whether a better-qualified firm could have done the work more safely, quickly or cheaply.

◊When public assets are mishandled, the loss belongs to every Guyanese.

◊When an investigation proceeds without its critical physical evidence, the truth itself becomes vulnerable.

THE FALSE CHOICE

Guyanese must reject the choice we are too often offered: either the Government acts quickly, or it acts transparently. It can and must do both.

The State can procure a competent salvage contractor swiftly and still publish the essentials of the process. It can preserve evidence while the Commission sits. It can explain delay honestly without compromising an inquiry. It can protect due process without protecting those who may have failed in their duties.

If procedures are slow, fix them. If the procurement system is cumbersome, modernize it. If technical expertise is thin, retain credible independent expertise. If the Commission needs resources, provide them.

What the Government may not do is use urgency to reduce transparency, use an inquiry to avoid questions, or use the language of development to excuse a system in which the public learns only what the Government decides it is entitled to know.

HOW INSTITUTIONS DIE

Institutions are rarely felled by one dramatic act. They are worn down by increments: one unexplained delay, one undisclosed contract, one unanswered question, one investigation that proceeds without all the evidence, one public concern dismissed as politics.

Each increment is defensible alone. Together they form a pattern, and a pattern left unchallenged becomes precedent.

The 592 Guardian will keep asking the questions. We call on the Government to show that it understands the difference between acting urgently and acting without accountability.

— The Board

 

 

 

The Minister Must Clarify: When “Protocol” Becomes an Excuse

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

The Minister Must Clarify :When “Protocol” Becomes an Excuse

Words matter most when they come from the people entrusted with the power of the State. More than ten days after she was made aware of a rape complaint against SOCU Head and Deputy Commissioner Fazil Karimbaksh, Minister of Home Affairs Oneidge Walrond finally addressed the matter publicly

Her intervention came not through a formal ministerial statement setting out the safeguards for the complainant, the independence of the investigation, or the status of the accused officer. It came in a Starting Point podcast interview, where the Minister appeared uncertain about the procedure and introduced the troubling prospect of a “formal confrontation.”

When the Minister of Home Affairs says that a “formal confrontation” will be held in a rape investigation involving a senior police officer, the public is entitled to ask exactly what she means. This is not social-media chatter. It is not a quarrel between private citizens. It concerns an allegation of rape and threatening behavior against Deputy Commissioner Fazil Karimbaksh, the Head of the Special Organized Crime Unit. That choice of words cannot be brushed aside.

The allegation is serious. The office held by the accused is powerful. The complainant, we are told, is a serving police officer. That alone should have required the greatest care in language, procedure and public communication.

Instead, the country was left with the phrase: “formal confrontation.” When asked whether this was standard practice for rape allegations, she suggested that Karimbaksh’s office as a Deputy Commissioner required a “particular procedure” to be followed. 

That phrase should never have been casually deployed without explanation.

But rank does not create a special criminal-investigation procedure that displaces the Sexual Offences Act.

If anything, the rank of the accused requires stronger safeguards: a clearly independent team, protection against interference, prompt preservation of evidence, insulation of witnesses, and removal of the accused from operational command while the investigation proceeds.

The law does not bend upward for powerful people

What The Law Says

Section 42 of the Sexual Offences Act is not ambiguous.

Guyana’s Sexual Offences Act is clear on the point. Section 42, under the heading “Confrontation,” does not create a general requirement for a complainant to come face-to-face with an accused person. It protects against that.

The provision says that a complainant who reports a sexual offence cannot be required to recount the complaint in the presence of the accused unless the complainant wishes to do so. Nor can the complainant be compelled to view or be in the presence of the alleged perpetrator, except in the limited circumstance of an identification procedure, where safeguards are meant to apply.

That means the Minister’s words require answers.

◊Was the complainant asked whether she wished to take part in a face-to-face encounter with Karimbaksh?

◊Has she voluntarily agreed to one?

◊Was a confrontation proposed by investigators, by the accused, or by some other official?

◊What precisely would occur during it?

◊Would the complainant have independent legal representation, support personnel, and the ability to decline or end the process?

That is the law. So when the Home Affairs Minister speaks of a “formal confrontation,” there are only a few possibilities.

◊Perhaps she meant that investigators will confront the accused with the allegation and the evidence gathered. That is normal investigative work.

◊Perhaps she meant that investigators will separately interview the complainant, the accused, relevant witnesses and other persons who may hold information. That, too, is normal investigative work.

◊Perhaps she meant a procedural exercise in which both versions are tested against documentary, digital, forensic, medical or witness evidence. Again, that is what an investigation is supposed to do.

But if she meant that the complainant is expected to sit across from the man she accuses of rape and threats, then the Minister must explain how that accords with Section 42.

Or did the Minister simply use the word “confrontation” without understanding that Parliament used the same word in Section 42 to establish a safeguard against forced contact between a complainant and an accused?

The public should not have to guess which explanation is correct. The Minister should state it plainly. And she must explain it quickly.

The Accused Remains On Duty

The other glaring issue is that Karimbaksh appears to remain at work while the investigation proceeds.

Walrond has said that, in her view, he should be sent on administrative leave. Yet she also says that this falls within the domain of the Police Service Commission, which is not presently constituted. The result appears to be paralysis: everyone acknowledges the seriousness of the complaint, but the official against whom it has been made remains on the job.

That cannot be accepted as an adequate institutional response.

A vacant or non-functioning Police Service Commission does not create a vacuum in which basic safeguards disappear. It cannot mean that a Deputy Commissioner facing an allegation of rape and threatening behaviour remains in an active operational position because the body that would ordinarily act is unavailable.

There must be another lawful administrative mechanism. There must be an acting authority. There must be an office capable of protecting the integrity of an investigation involving a senior police officer. If there is not, then that itself is an institutional scandal demanding immediate executive action. No one is suggesting that administrative leave is a finding of guilt. It is not.

It is a risk-management measure. It protects the investigation from actual or perceived interference. It reassures witnesses that they can cooperate freely. It helps protect records, electronic communications, station logs and other material that may become relevant. It also protects Karimbaksh from the allegation that he used his office, influence or access to compromise the process.

The question is simple: who will bell the cat?

The Greene Precedent

Guyana has been here before.

When then Commissioner of Police Henry Greene faced a rape allegation in 2011, the country confronted the obvious problem of police officers investigating their own Commissioner. Greene stepped away from his duties, and external assistance was sought for the investigation.

The handling of that matter was far from a model. It attracted sustained public criticism, legal controversy and continuing questions over accountability. But it did establish two principles that should not now be forgotten merely because the name of the accused has changed.

First, the officer should not remain in effective operational control while a grave allegation is under investigation.

Second, where allegations reach the highest levels of the Guyana Police Force, the investigation must have visible independence. It must not merely be described as impartial; it must be structured in a way that gives the public reason to believe it is impartial.

An internal team appointed by the Police Commissioner may be lawful. But legality is not the only issue. The issue is confidence.

Can serving police officers investigate a Deputy Commissioner, a SOCU Head, a senior colleague, and a man with institutional relationships across the Force, without external oversight or assistance?

The State must answer that question with more than assurances.

Protocol Cannot Prevail Over Justice

The Minister’s position appears to be that administrative leave is desirable but that “protocol” and the absence of a functioning Police Service Commission stand in the way.

That is precisely backwards.

Protocols exist to protect the public interest. They are not meant to shelter the State from acting when the public interest demands action.

Where a protocol produces the result that an officer accused of rape and threats remains at work because no one is prepared to assume responsibility, the problem is no longer merely procedural. It becomes a failure of governance.

A government cannot invoke “due process” only when it serves to postpone difficult decisions. Due process requires a fair investigation. It does not require the accused to remain in an operational position while that investigation is conducted.

Nor does it require the complainant to navigate an investigation while the accused retains the authority, relationships and institutional standing of a Deputy Commissioner.

This is where leadership matters.

Someone must identify the lawful route for temporarily relieving Karimbaksh of operational responsibility. Someone must decide whether the Police Commissioner has authority to reassign duties, restrict access, place the officer on leave, or otherwise remove him from any position that could affect the investigation. Someone must determine whether Cabinet, the President, the Police Commissioner, the Attorney General, or another constitutionally authorized office must act to address the vacuum created by the absence of a Police Service Commission.

But someone must act.

What Must Happen Now

The public needs more than statements promising professionalism and impartiality. It needs concrete safeguards.

◊ Karimbaksh should be immediately relieved of operational responsibilities pending the outcome of the investigation, without prejudice to his right to due process.

◊The Government and Police Force should state the legal and administrative basis for that temporary step, including what authority will act in the absence of a constituted Police Service Commission.

◊The investigation should be independently supervised, with external investigators or credible external oversight considered because of Karimbaksh’s rank and position.

◊The authorities should publicly clarify what “formal confrontation” means and confirm that the complainant will not be required to be in Karimbaksh’s presence unless she freely chooses to do so.

◊The complainant should be offered independent legal support, trauma-informed assistance and appropriate protection from intimidation or retaliation.

◊The Force should identify, at minimum, the independence safeguards, reporting structure and expected timetable for the investigative team, without compromising the integrity of the inquiry.

◊All potentially relevant evidence—including electronic communications, call records, duty rosters, official logs, access records and CCTV material—should be promptly secured.

The police statement says the allegations will be investigated professionally, impartially and according to established procedures. That is the minimum promise the public should expect.

But a promise is not a safeguard.

The test is whether the accused remains in a position of operational influence; whether the complainant is protected by the law; whether the investigative team is visibly independent; and whether the Government can demonstrate that “protocol” will not be used as a shield for institutional inaction

A Legal Title Is Not Understanding

Oneidge Walrond is a lawyer. She was a magistrate. She is now Minister of Home Affairs, with political responsibility for a ministry that includes national security and has direct relevance to policing, public safety and the administration of justice.

Those credentials should make the public more confident that statutory safeguards will be understood and respected. They should mean that language is used precisely, especially in a case of this gravity.

Instead, the Minister used a term that appears in the statute itself—“confrontation”—without making clear whether she understood that the section is designed to prevent a complainant from being compelled into one.

At some point, titles cease to be reassuring. They become the reason the public expects better.

A lawyer should know the significance of the words she uses. A former magistrate should understand the difference between lawful procedure and avoidable re-traumatisation. A Home Affairs Minister should recognize that public remarks can shape the conduct of police officers, investigators and junior officials who may take their cues from the political head of the sector.

The Larger Failure

The issue is larger than one statement, one podcast or one official.

Guyana has repeatedly passed laws that sound progressive on paper but are weakened by poor implementation, weak institutional culture and an alarming willingness by officials to treat rights as administrative inconveniences.

A statute can say the right thing. But if police officers, ministers, prosecutors and investigators do not understand the right thing—or do not believe they must follow it—the protection becomes theoretical.

Put The Safeguards Into Practice

Guyana does not need another episode in which officials discover the meaning of the law only after the public embarrasses them into reading it.

The Minister should clarify her statement. The Guyana Police Force should publicly identify the safeguards governing the investigation. The complainant should be told, unequivocally, that she cannot be compelled to confront the accused. And the public should be assured that the accused will receive a fair process without the complainant being exposed to pressure, intimidation or re-traumatisation.

That is not radical.That is not anti-police.That is not a conviction before trial.

It is the bare minimum required when the allegation is rape, the accused is a Deputy Commissioner, and the State claims to be governed by law.

The use of the local vernacular  may be tempting here. But the more serious word is failure: failure of precision, failure of leadership, and failure to understand that in sexual-offence cases, procedure is not separate from justice. Procedure is justice.

 

 

 A nat’l govt, the national criminal enterprise

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

 A nat’l govt, the national criminal enterprise

OPINION BY: GHK LALL October 2026

Want to see the PPP Govt’s true colors?  Expose it as the premier national criminal enterprise in Guyana and watch it go crazy.  Want to watch the national leadership degrade in the worst way?  Give it the public label of the region’s leading national criminal entrepreneurs, with only random exceptions.  I guarantee it.  The PPP Govt knows it.  Still, it works overtime to snuff out the few voices in pitiful, fearful, Guyana that lineup the government and identifies it.

Twenty indigenous children as good as murdered, while trapped in an interior dormitory that had maximum-security prison controls.  Then, another 100 Guyanese murdered as well in one mass killing that has shocked the nation and made the world blanch with disbelief.  A man behaves recklessly while around gasoline and matches, and it’s inevitable that a massacre follows, victims pileup.  Further, when six execution-style murders are put in a Ziploc bag and buried at the bottom of the PPP Govt freezer, then a national criminal enterprise prospers.

This is what the PPP Govt doesn’t want to hear spoken, or see written.  This is what drives ancient Burnham stooges mad, to find a spark, and add conscientious objectors to their victims.  It’s where the poisoned young, born that way, get worse along the way, and work tirelessly to blow away the disagreeable.  What else to expect from scurrilous, duplicitous henchmen?  Get him.  Thus, they operate from Offices of the Pres, the PM, the VP.  It must be a real desperado that the PPP has on its hands.  What’s revealing is that the more they try to vilify, the more that there’s false witnessing, the more they fail, shame themselves.  The credibility of the party and its actors (literally) develops bigger scars on their faces. 

 When declared a national criminal enterprise, the PPP gets resourceful.  It temporarily retired Live in Guyana, its guerilla fighting unit, and unveiled new faces.  New faces, old faces, it’s the same contaminated blood.  Dirty tricks (FB), Burnham venom (OP), PPP ooze (OPM), it is the same story: a national government proves itself, confesses its double life as the national criminal enterprise in Guyana.  There’re the billions squandered and stolen.  Those led to deaths by the score (Mahdia), then by a hundred (Barima).  Argue with that, my PPP brothers.  There’re the plasters, three to date, that peel off, because serial thieves know the game, play along.  One big man calling the PPP elite (ministers, public servants) and playacting with playful lashes.  Ayuh bettah deal straight, or else….  A bigger man, now weightless, held a siesta at the Arthur Chung Palace.  The same trick of a playful public beating down of those enriching themselves, while the Guyanese people get poorer, hungrier, sicker.  Sicker over the skullduggeries.  The first big man performed his masquerade a second time.  Regionals called, given a good spanking.  Part of the show. 

His reward was solemn faces externally, and smirks and yawns inside.  Meanwhile, Guyanese continue to cry for justice, for standards, for relief.

When these are held aloft in bright colors in Kiskadee Watch, Kaieteur News, Village Voice, Demerara Waves, and 592Guardian, the PPP mob takes over.  Men with PhDs, men with fake doctorates, men who were Burnham’s Molotov hurlers, all become agitated, and spring into action.  Who to send after this Dalit?  How to suppress this dissenter?  Make him look bad, to make the PPP look good?  Both are impossibilities.  The people see.  The people hear.  The people interpret, conclude.  The PPP Govt succeeded that brilliantly at being Guyana’s number one national criminal enterprise. 

FB efforts highlight the rot inside the party; make matters worse.  I feel for the party of Cheddi that has self-destructed, come to this low gutter

I grieve for the Ramotars and Rohees (still holding) amid the arrival of the new PPP creatures that crawled out of the sewer.  Cripes! OP and OPM and OVP must stink!  Behold! The PPP Govt: Guyana’s foremost national criminal enterprise.

Guyana’s Oil Wealth Is Being Borrowed Away: The Dangerous Debt Legacy of Ali and Ashni Singh

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

Guyana’s Oil Wealth Is Being Borrowed Away: The Dangerous Debt Legacy of Ali and Ashni Singh

OPINION BY: Charles Sugrim October 2026

The Overall Deficit After Grants in the Guyanese public finance has deteriorated dramatically over the last 12 months under the watch of Dr. Ashni Singh. It declined from negative $35 billion in the first half of 2025 to negative $105 billion in the first half of 2026. No government can credibly present this as an achievement. It is driven almost entirely by runaway public expenditure, which rose by $62 billion year-on-year, while revenues shrunk by nearly $4 billion. Spending more while earning less is not a recipe for national development; it is a national disaster.  

Rather than deal with this hard truth, the Irfaan Ali Government has sought to hoodwink the population on how much new oil revenues we have. But the truth of the matter more and more of our oil revenues are being pawned away to the banks as we borrow more and more every day.

These figures reveal that the PPP-C administration under President Irfaan Ali is pursuing a markedly more expansionary fiscal policy, financed through borrowing. Borrowing in Guyana tripled between the first half of 2025 and the first half of 2026. Let me repeat that: borrowing tripled in a single year and the figures are all there in their own Ministry of Finance MID-YEAR REPORT 2026.

Net external borrowing surged from $19 billion to $71 billion, while net borrowing from the local banking sector rose from $16 billion to $35 billion, apparently to absorb excess liquidity being paid out to their favored friends and families in the contracting class. The administration is borrowing from foreign and domestic lenders alike, with the evident purpose of financing a contracting class on projects that are not bringing relief to the people.

 Is this Irfaan Ali’s vision of productive national development and shared prosperity for the people of Guyana?

Unless the non-oil economy grows consistently and persistently faster than this debt accumulation, Guyana risks seeing its oil wealth (currently held in the Natural Resource Fund), pledged away to banks and other creditors.

This raises immediate and serious concerns about debt sustainability and future interest burdens, something which Mr. Christopher Ram continues to highlight for the nation. Interest payments already rose by $5 billion between the first half of 2025 and the first half of 2026. At this pace, annual interest payments are projected to exceed $20 billion by year-end, a snowballing obligation that consumes ever more fiscal space and leaves less for the Guyanese people. That is money flowing to lenders, not to citizens.

Dr. Ashni Singh is failing this nation as Minister of Finance by permitting his political bosses to raid the treasury without issuing the necessary fiscal advisories. This is not how a solid foundation is built for a nation. This not how generational wealth is acquired.

Over the past three years, these reckless policies have directly fueled inflation and a runaway cost of living crisis, while the government deflects blame onto the Gulf war and Ukraine war rather than leveling with the people on their poor public financial policies.

They have also crowded out private sector investment, which could have grown by an additional $70 billion over the past year had the government not absorbed so much new debt in the name of the people.

The Guyanese people should take nothing this administration says at face value. In real terms, they will be poorer next year than they were last year. Guyana’s most talented professionals already recognize this, which is precisely why so many young, skilled citizens continue to seek opportunities in better-managed democracies abroad.

Our future is bleak. The PPP-C administration continues to mislead the uninformed public about the true reality of our country’s finances.

Future administrations will inherit a crushing public debt burden—one that taxpayers will be forced to service for decades. This reckless borrowing does not merely mortgage future revenues; it threatens to strip citizens of essential public services as ever-larger portions of the national budget are diverted to banks and creditors.

President Irfaan Ali must come clean with the Guyanese people. During his recent trip to New York, he boasted of an economic transformation built on new roads, hospitals, and schools. What he did not disclose was the soaring debt being piled onto the backs of our children and grandchildren to finance it.

Infrastructure is not progress when it is built on unsustainable debt, hidden obligations, and the sacrifice of Guyana’s future fiscal independence.

The UN Must Not Mistake Credentials for Moral Clarity

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 592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

The UN Must Not Mistake Credentials for Moral Clarity

OPINION BY: Staff Writer October 2026

The contest to select the next Secretary-General of the United Nations is not merely an exercise in diplomatic rotation. It is a test of whether the organization still understands the moral burden of its own office.

Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, Guyana’s former Foreign Minister and current Permanent Representative to the United Nations, is being presented as a potentially historic candidate: a woman, a Caribbean national and a person of Indigenous heritage who could break long-standing barriers at the pinnacle of the multilateral system.

Those distinctions matter. Representation matters. The Caribbean deserves serious consideration in global leadership. Women have been unjustly excluded from the UN’s highest office since the organization’s creation in 1945. 

 But history-making identity cannot exempt any candidate from scrutiny. The next Secretary-General must not simply possess diplomatic experience, regional backing and institutional relationships. That person must demonstrate sound judgement about authoritarianism, human rights, terrorism, democratic freedom and the equal value of civilian life—regardless of ideology, geography or geopolitical alliances.

On that score, Rodrigues-Birkett’s public record warrants direct and serious examination.

Praise for Castroism Cannot Be Ignored

In 2013, while serving as Guyana’s Foreign Minister, Rodrigues-Birkett moved a National Assembly motion marking four decades of diplomatic relations between Guyana and Cuba. In the course of that tribute, she praised Fidel Castro not only for his contribution to Guyana, but for what he had supposedly done “for humanity in general,” while extending wishes of long life and good health to Fidel Castro and Raúl Castro.

There is nothing improper about recognizing Guyana’s longstanding diplomatic relationship with Cuba or acknowledging Cuban assistance in health, education and other sectors. Small states routinely maintain practical relationships across ideological divides.

But there is a clear difference between diplomacy and adulation.

Fidel Castro did not merely lead a country under difficult circumstances. He presided over a one-party political system that denied citizens meaningful democratic choice, repressed dissidents, punished independent journalists, restricted civil society and criminalized political opposition. Human-rights monitors documented recurring arbitrary detentions and harassment of peaceful activists, including the Ladies in White, whose members were targeted precisely because they demanded dignity and freedom for political prisoners.

Any prospective UN Secretary-General should be able to distinguish humanitarian cooperation from the glorification of authoritarian rulers.

The office demands moral clarity. It demands a willingness to defend people against repression whether that repression comes from a military dictatorship, a communist state, an absolute monarchy, an occupying force, a militia or a Western-aligned government.

Moral Language Must Apply Evenly

Rodrigues-Birkett has also spoken sharply at the Security Council on Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. She has invoked genocide, mass atrocities, occupation, displacement and the duty to protect Palestinian civilians. Those concerns cannot simply be dismissed. The scale of civilian suffering, displacement and destruction in Gaza has horrified the world and demands serious legal, humanitarian and political scrutiny.

Yet the credibility of international diplomacy depends on consistency.

The October 7, 2023, Hamas-led assault against Israel involved the deliberate killing, kidnapping and abuse of civilians. It included acts of terror that must be condemned without ambiguity. Hamas’s repression of Palestinians, its attacks on political rivals, and its use of civilian areas in warfare also belong within any honest discussion of Gaza’s tragedy.

A Secretary-General cannot afford selective outrage.

The UN’s chief diplomat must be prepared to defend Palestinian civilians while unequivocally condemning Hamas terrorism; to challenge Israel where international law may have been breached while affirming Israel’s right to exist and protect its population; and to recognize that no political grievance authorizes rape, hostage-taking, massacre or collective punishment.

When leaders reserve their strongest language for one side and appear muted toward atrocities committed by another, they weaken the very standards they claim to uphold.

A UN Office, Not an Ideological Prize

The Secretary-General is not intended to be an advocate for a bloc, a regional caucus or a fashionable ideological current. The position exists to defend the UN Charter, mediate conflicts, speak for civilians caught in war and uphold human rights even when powerful governments dislike it.

That requires more than procedural familiarity with the UN system. It requires independence.

Rodrigues-Birkett brings extensive diplomatic experience. She has represented Guyana at the UN, served in senior regional and international roles, and understands multilateral diplomacy at a level few candidates can match. CARICOM is entitled to promote a Caribbean candidate, and the region’s voice should not be treated as secondary in a process historically dominated by larger powers.

But Guyana, CARICOM, Security Council members and the wider international press should not treat her candidacy as beyond question merely because it is symbolically important.

The relevant question is not whether Rodrigues-Birkett is qualified on paper. She plainly has experience.

The question is whether her public record reflects the principled, universal and independent moral judgement needed to lead an institution that routinely confronts war crimes, political repression, terrorism, unlawful occupation and assaults on democratic freedoms.

The Questions She Must Answer

Before the Security Council advances any recommendation, Rodrigues-Birkett should be asked plainly:

⇒Does she stand by her praise of Fidel Castro as a benefactor of “humanity,” in light of Cuba’s record of political repression and denial of fundamental freedoms?

⇒Does she recognize the systematic persecution of Cuban dissidents, independent journalists and peaceful activists under the Castro system?

⇒ Does she unequivocally condemn Hamas’s October 7 atrocities, its hostage-taking and its deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians?

⇒ Does she accept that international humanitarian law binds Hamas and other armed groups as much as it binds the Israeli state?

⇒Can she demonstrate that her approach to human rights is universal rather than selective?

⇒Would she confront human-rights abuses by governments and movements politically aligned with her own regional or ideological partners?

These are not peripheral questions. They go to the core of the office she seeks.

A Higher Standard Is Required

The United Nations has endured years of declining public trust. Too often, it has appeared paralyzed before aggression, divided by great-power rivalry and compromised by member states that preach human rights abroad while suppressing them at home.

Its next Secretary-General should not deepen that crisis of confidence.

The world does not need another cautious manager of diplomatic language. It needs a leader who can speak consistently about liberty, civilian protection and human dignity—even when doing so is inconvenient to allies, regional partners or ideological sympathizers

Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett has every right to seek the position. CARICOM has every right to support her. But no candidate for the world’s most consequential multilateral office is entitled to immunity from scrutiny.

Historic representation is meaningful. It is not, however, a substitute for a principled record.

The UN must choose a Secretary-General who recognizes tyrants as tyrants, terrorism as terrorism and civilian suffering as equally intolerable—wherever it occurs, and whoever commits it.

 

Darkness Without Accountability: Guyana’s Power Crisis and the Price of Delay.

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

Darkness Without Accountability: Guyana’s Power Crisis and the Price of Delay.

OPINION BY: Staff Writer October 2026

Madagascar’s government removed an energy minister and later dissolved its cabinet when electricity and water failures ignited unrest. In Guyana, by contrast, the public has endured recurring blackouts while the Gas-to-Energy promise of cheaper, more reliable power has slipped years beyond its original deadline—and the national response has been more spending, more assurances, and still no clear personal accountability.

Madagascar’s electricity crisis offers a sobering lesson for Guyana: when a government cannot guarantee the most basic utility service, public anger does not remain confined to a technical explanation, a press release, or another promise of works to come.

There, persistent blackouts and water shortages sparked youth-led demonstrations. The government imposed curfews, dismissed its Energy Minister, and then dissolved the cabinet as the crisis deepened. Those steps did not solve the structural failures overnight, but they conveyed an essential principle: when essential services collapse, somebody in authority must answer. 

Guyana’s situation is different in circumstance, but the central question is uncomfortably similar: who is accountable when citizens are left in darkness almost daily?

The Wales Gas-to-Energy project was sold as the answer—a 300-megawatt development expected to improve reliability and support a 50 percent reduction in electricity tariffs. It was initially expected to deliver by the end of 2024. Yet the official schedule now places first power only at the end of 2026, with full combined-cycle operation projected for June 2027.

So Guyanese have not received the promised 50 percent reduction in electricity bills. Instead, many consumers are effectively experiencing what might be called a  100 percent reduction in electricity supply whenever their homes, shops, offices, equipment and livelihoods are cut off by outages.

That is not merely an inconvenience. It is lost production, spoiled food, damaged appliances, interrupted learning, disrupted health care, insecurity, unbearable heat, and mounting costs for every household and business compelled to purchase fuel, generators, batteries, inverters or other alternatives.

From deadline to delay

The issue is not whether a major power project can face technical challenges. It is whether a government that repeatedly advertised a 2024 delivery date can now treat a two-and-a-half-year delay as an ordinary adjustment—without a transparent accounting of responsibility, cost consequences, contractual remedies, or consequences for failures in project management.

Government statements now indicate that the initial gas turbine should be available by the end of 2026, while the full system is expected only in 2027. Moreover, the government has clarified that the long-promised 50 percent tariff reduction is tied to attaining at least 228 megawatts of GtE supply—not the limited initial power expected at year-end.

The public deserves direct answers:

⇒ Who approved the original timetable, and what evidence supported it?

⇒  What precisely caused the project to miss its 2024 delivery target?

⇒ What penalties, if any, have been imposed on contractors or project managers?

⇒ What additional costs—direct and indirect—has Guyana borne because reliable GtE capacity was not delivered on time?

⇒ On what published date can households and businesses reasonably expect the advertised 50 percent tariff reduction?

Until those questions are answered in documents, not slogans, Guyanese are being asked to bear the consequences of a project over which they had no control.

Another US$800 million

President Irfaan Ali has said the next six months will be critical, pointing to mandatory maintenance, generation overhauls, limited reserve capacity, and aged transmission and distribution infrastructure. He has also stated that GPL estimates close to US$800 million will be needed over five years to upgrade the transmission and distribution network alone.

That announcement should not pass without rigorous public scrutiny.

US$800 million is not a casual estimate. It is an enormous prospective public commitment—particularly when the country is already financing an overdue flagship energy project and citizens remain exposed to unreliable service. Yet the public has not been presented with a granular, independently reviewable scope showing how much is allocated to substations, feeders, transformers, dispatch systems, transmission lines, loss reduction, storage, maintenance, consultants, procurement, contingency, and project supervision.

Guyanese should not be asked to accept a US$800 million figure on faith while enduring daily shutdowns. If the grid’s deficiencies are sufficiently grave to require that scale of spending, then GPL and the Government must publish the engineering assessment, the project list, implementation timetable, procurement pathway, financing sources, performance indicators, and the names of those responsible for delivery.

The InterEnergy question

The InterEnergy Group consultancy raises an even more pressing issue. Government has publicly defended a proposed two-year arrangement with the Dominican Republic-based company at approximately US $15.6 million – in a no bid contract, describing its purpose as supervising projects, modernizing GPL’s management systems, overhauling the utility’s operations, and improving reliability and efficiency.

But that mandate demands measurable results—not broad language.

If customers continue to experience near-daily interruptions, the public is entitled to know:

⇒ What exact deliverables has InterEnergy been contracted to produce?

⇒ What reliability targets, outage-reduction benchmarks and reporting requirements apply?

⇒ Who measures performance, and will the results be published monthly?

⇒ What part of the US$15 million is for technical supervision, management reform, training, systems upgrades, or other work?

⇒ If the consultancy is meant to strengthen reliability, why has GPL not publicly set out its outage data, failure analysis, corrective-action program, and milestones for improvement?

A consultant cannot be paid millions merely to narrate a crisis that citizens experience every day. Its value must be demonstrated in a functioning system: fewer feeder trips, faster restoration, better reserve capacity, maintained generators, credible planning, and transparent reporting.

A question of leadership

The President’s stated plan is to stabilize the supply over six months through generation overhauls, additional capacity at critical points, and completion of the Berbice-Demerara interconnection.  Those may be necessary interventions. But necessity does not erase the fact that Guyana is being asked to endure another period of uncertainty after years of assurances that GtE would make power cheaper, cleaner and more dependable.

The country cannot build a manufacturing economy, attract energy-intensive investment, protect small businesses, or ask citizens to embrace a modernizing future while electricity remains a daily gamble.

Madagascar showed what happens when service failure becomes a national political crisis. Guyana should not wait for similar public desperation before embracing the standards that ought already to apply: full disclosure, independent oversight, enforceable timelines, contract accountability, named responsibility, and consequences when promises fail.

No nation becomes an energy powerhouse by issuing explanations during blackouts.

It becomes one by delivering power—reliably, affordably, and on time.

 

 

Night tortures -uneasy the heads wearing crowns

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

Night tortures -uneasy the heads wearing crowns

OPINION BY : GHK LALL October 2026

The spotlight is on KW’s October 1, 2026 editorial titled “Sleepless nights”.  What to make of this presidential confession?  Of his nocturnal torments, his dreamless nightmares.  The ghosts of 100 dead swirl around his head like a crown of nails.  Deserving, I think.  I shall try to be gentle, even though blood drips, oxygen stops.

Ten weeks after the MV Barima tragedy, the deceptions and deviations continue apace.  Three charged for murder.  The innocent paraded before the Stabroek Market, then made to march to the perp walk.  Such an injustice should strike the consciousness, reverse what valium tries to do.  Two months after the Commission of Inquiry has been sworn in, it is still trying to locate its compass and its propellor. Like the Mahdia Dorm Conflagration and its revealing COI, so the MV Barima aquatic suffocation and its COI that has sham marked on its face from the beginning. 

If there was any interest in honoring the dead, and justice for the impacted families, then several reflexive, irreversible, steps had to have occurred within a week of the tragedy.

An apology for the smirk and scorn of “noise.”  Those using that word should have resigned.  I differ with Kiskadee Watch about waiting for the evidence.  True men fall on their swords.  Damnit! There’s that Port Kaituma wharf and that new boat that was converted to a sport boat and love boat.  So, 100 were as good as doomed while the music played, the dancers gyrated.  Let’s there be no quibbling here.  Who honors their combat losses with the derisive contemptuousness of “noise?” 

The ministers should have resigned.  The Prime Minister should have gone voluntarily.  And the president in this instance has no claim on immunity.  If there is neither president nor prime minister, then there’s no cabinet.

Editors of the Kiskadee Watch: that’s taking responsibility (not slurs about “noise”).  Running oneself through is what eases the pangs of sleepless nights.  Too often the most pious and the most belatedly reflective are the most defective.  And self-destructive, too.  All these billions and all these crimes that have no owner.  Now, the conscience of the Guyanese people is savaged, the intelligence of Guyana’s indigenous belittled with “sleepless nights.”  Does anyone dance at a house of mourning amid the wrenching dirges of loss and pain?  Does anyone pretend at pain, when they were part of the plot that led to 100 dead, and a thousand beating their breasts, and a nation of a million asking: where is the responsibility?  Who will be man or woman enough to say, I am responsible?

Give seafarers a basket for a boat, and a toothpick and a feather for lifejackets to brave the ocean, and there is a recipe for tragedy.  In sleepless nights I hear an effort at sanctimoniousness that’s so risible, it incurs ridicule.  The parties have continued.  The charades live on.  Neither a protest nor a placard is needed when responsibility has to be taken, and there is always that ultimate owner.  The baton cannot be passed on, for there’s none other.  I think that the MV Barima catastrophe was both foreseeable and avoidable.  The condition and history of the boat.  How the same people now crying in the day and talking to some false god in the night misused those keeping that boat going. 

When they pulled rank and overloaded that boat.  When they added to its torturous and dangerous passages that took a few years too long before it collapsed under the weight of its own weakness and the might of the sea.

Last, I consider myself among the most sympathetic of individuals.  But when there’s a long, sordid, history of swearing to one thing (many things), then contradicting oneself, the best I can summon is distaste, but still a prayer.  Too many wrongs in this country can be rightly attached to government and leadership. 

From coverups of unsolved murders to character assassinations, from corruptions of words and budgets and oil money to the pathos of a gullible people.  If sleepless nights did happen, then their source, I think, could be much more than a boat with 100 poor dead people responsible. 

Guyana: Stop Sleepwalking Through Failure

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

Guyana: Stop Sleepwalking Through Failure

OPINION BY :Hem Kumar October 2026 

There is something profoundly disturbing about the ease with which Guyanese have been trained to accept mediocrity and  failure.

The lights go out. People curse GPL, post a complaint online, light a candle, start the generator if they can afford one, throw out spoiled food, and wait. The next day, another blackout comes. More appliances are damaged. Businesses lose money. Children cannot study. Patients and elderly citizens suffer in overheated homes. Families are forced to endure the indignity of living in a country overflowing with oil wealth but struggling to keep a bulb lit.

And still, too many Guyanese shrug.

They complain in private, whisper on minibuses, rage on Facebook, call radio programs, and then retreat back into the same helpless silence that has allowed incompetence to settle comfortably into public life.

That silence is not patience. It is permission.

For more than a month, Guyana has been subjected to serious and recurring electricity and water  failures; because when the power fails, the water stop flowing. These are not small inconveniences. Electricity is not a luxury reserved for the wealthy. It keeps food from spoiling, businesses functioning, classrooms productive, medicines refrigerated, medical equipment operating and homes safe. When a government, through its agencies and public utilities, cannot reliably provide electricity and water, it has failed in one of its most basic duties to the population.

Yet where is the national outrage equal to the offence?

Guyana is now an oil-producing state earning billions and boasting constantly about development, infrastructure, modernisation and transformation. Ministers fly abroad to tell investors that Guyana is the next great frontier. Government spokesmen speak grandly of growth figures, massive projects and a prosperous future.

But what kind of prosperity leaves citizens sitting in darkness?

What kind of transformation means shopkeepers must discard perishable goods because the power has failed again? What kind of economic miracle demands that small businesses buy generators, pay higher fuel bills, lose customers and absorb damaged equipment because public authorities cannot ensure a functioning electricity system? What kind of development leaves working families to sweat through the night while officials offer stale explanations and vague assurances?

A country can build shiny roads, erect towering hotels and announce billion-dollar contracts. But if it cannot consistently deliver electricity, clean water, public safety, functioning hospitals and reliable public services, it has not built development. It has built a public-relations campaign.,

The recent national response to the MV Barima disaster tells an even more troubling story. More than 100 lives were lost. More than 100 human beings—parents, children, relatives, workers, friends—were swallowed up by a tragedy that should have shaken the conscience of this country from coast to hinterland.

What followed should have been a sustained national demand for truth and accountability. Citizens should have demanded full disclosure of the circumstances, safety procedures, oversight failures, rescue arrangements, official communications, investigative findings and responsibility at every level.

Instead, the country was met with silence, delays and the familiar fading of public outrage. A group of young Guyanese held a silent protest against official silence. Their action carried a message the entire country should have heard: lives cannot be treated as statistics, and a government cannot simply wait for grief to evaporate.

But the wider public response remained painfully weak. Silence in Guyana is not a failure of courage. It is a failure of solidarity, and the government has priced it in.

That is the first half of the argument. The second half is about money. A government that lives on its citizens’ taxes lives on their consent. When services fail, it has to answer, because the next bill depends on it. 

Guyana’s government increasingly lives elsewhere. Oil revenue flows to the state from foreign operators, and the fiscal link between what the public pays and what the government can spend has weakened. A ruling party that does not need its citizens’ money has little reason to fear their patience running out. 

The result is what we are watching: ministers still in post eleven weeks on, salvage bids sitting for two weeks with no winner named, and a Commission of Inquiry now advertising for persons of interest to come forward while the Executive offers nothing of its own.

Put the two halves together and the picture is bleak. The tragedy is concentrated, so it does not unite the public. The state is insulated from public anger, so it does not need to respond. Each condition makes the other worse.

This publication does not conclude that nothing can be done. The young people who stood silently outside the Office of the President understood something their elders have not: when a grievance is not naturally shared, it has to be made shared. That is the work of organizing, of turnout, of testimony, and of a press that keeps the names of the dead in front of citizens who would otherwise move on. It is slow, and it is the only method that does not end with a colonel in front of the palace, as Madagascar’s did.

Here are the demands, and they are small enough that refusing them says everything:

♦Name the winning salvage bidder, publish all three bids, and give the Commission binding authority over how the wreck is raised.

♦Publish the Barima’s inspection and certification history, and the Coast Guard’s response timeline for the night of July 18.

♦Hold the Commission’s hearings in public, in full, on schedule.

♦Let the families, not the Ministry, choose who stands beside them.

That is the paradox of Guyana. People complain that politicians are arrogant, dismissive and insulated. They complain that ministers do not listen, public agencies do not answer, contracts are shrouded in secrecy, public money disappears into questionable schemes, and ordinary people are treated as an afterthought.

Then, when there is a moment to apply public pressure, too many disappear. They say they are tired. They say nothing will change. They say protest does not work. They say it is dangerous. They say they have jobs, families and responsibilities. They say someone else should take the lead.

But every excuse has a political beneficiary: the people already in power.

A government that meets no serious resistance will become increasingly comfortable with neglect. A minister who is never forced to account publicly will become more dismissive. A public corporation that is never confronted by organised consumers will continue to offer excuses in place of results. Every citizen who quietly adapts to failure helps create the conditions for its repetition.

This is not a call for violence. It is not a call to burn, loot, destroy or endanger another citizen. Those actions serve no public cause and usually give authorities an excuse to suppress legitimate dissent. This is a call for Guyanese to become citizens again.

Look at the world. In Serbia, the deaths of  16 people triggered sustained public agitation and relentless demands for accountability. Citizens did not allow official statements to close the matter. They maintained public pressure until the political consequences could no longer be ignored.

In Madagascar, thousands of young people have taken to the streets in response to recurring water and electricity failures. Their country, too, has endured political turbulence and severe state failures. The situation has had deadly and troubling consequences, and no sensible society should seek to reproduce that violence. But the lesson is unmistakable: citizens who refuse to be ignored can force government to confront its failures.

Guyana does not have to import chaos. It must import courage.

The country needs citizens who will stand outside GPL offices and demand real answers, not polished statements. It needs peaceful marches and pickets that last longer than one afternoon and cannot be managed away with a photograph and a promise. It needs consumer organisations to document losses, business groups to tally the cost of outages, legal advocates to test whether public authorities have met their duties, and journalists to pursue every claim until it is answered.

It needs churches, unions, youth organisations, professional bodies, parent groups and community associations to stop behaving as though public failure is somebody else’s problem.

Demand the outage data. Demand the names of the responsible decision-makers. Demand the maintenance records. Demand the generation-capacity figures. Demand a truthful explanation of why a petroleum-producing country cannot guarantee steady power. Demand deadlines that can be measured. Demand consequences when those deadlines are missed.

And above all, stop allowing political tribalism to weaken public outrage.

If you condemn blackouts only when the other party is in office, you are not defending citizens—you are performing for a political team. If you excuse failure because your preferred party holds power, you are helping to build the same system you claim to hate. Darkness does not ask whether a household is PPP, PNC, AFC, APNU, WPA, or politically unaffiliated. Spoiled food does not recognise party colours. A damaged refrigerator does not care who you voted for. A child trying to study in the heat does not benefit from partisan excuses.

This is where Guyanese must grow up politically.

The government should understand that people are watching, recording, questioning and organising. GPL should understand that citizens will not simply absorb losses while executives and officials hide behind technical jargon. Every minister should understand that a title is not a shield from accountability. Every agency should understand that public money comes with public obligations.

The age of accepting “we are working on it” must end.

Guyanese have endured too much and demanded too little. They have confused quiet suffering with resilience. They have mistaken political loyalty for citizenship. They have allowed themselves to be worn down until outrage is replaced by resignation.

But resignation is exactly what failure depends on.

The people of Guyana must wake up. Not tomorrow, after another blackout. Not after another avoidable tragedy. Not when another family loses income, another shopkeeper loses stock, another student loses study time, or another official tells the country to be patient.

Wake up now.

Organise peacefully. Speak loudly. Document everything. Demand answers. Return again and again until those entrusted with public power understand that the citizens of Guyana are no longer prepared to live in darkness—literal or political.

Because a people who sleepwalk through every failure should not be shocked when those in authority conclude that they can govern them without consequence.

A government that does not depend on its people’s money can afford to ignore their grief. It cannot afford to ignore their attention. Keep looking.