THE REVOLVING DOOR: WHEN “SACRED TRUST” BECOMES A RERUN

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

THE REVOLVING DOOR: WHEN “SACRED TRUST” BECOMES A RERUN

ACCOUNTABILITY & INVESTIGATIVE COMMENTARY

OPINION BY: Hem Kumar September 2026

Sixteen weeks after a purge conducted in its name, the government’s own appointee is now the one being sued for the offence “sacred trust” was supposed to end.

On September 7, Vice President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo convened Ministers, every Permanent Secretary, every Regional Executive Officer, and the accounting officers of the state’s semi-autonomous agencies at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre. The subject was accountability: procurement transactions, government payment systems, the disclosure of information to the public. Compliance would be tracked. Breaches, the assembled officials were told, would carry consequences.

Govt Ministers schooled on Governance?

Read on its own, this sounds like governance. Read against the record, it sounds like a rerun.

THE SAME SCRIPT, FOUR MONTHS EARLIER

On May 14, 2026, President Irfaan Ali and Vice President Jagdeo convened a nearly identical meeting at the Office of the President — Cabinet members, incoming Regional Executive Officers, Permanent Secretaries, and officials of the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board.

That meeting produced more than talk. It produced a purge: all ten regional administrations received new or reassigned REOs, several sitting officers were removed outright, and the exercise was reported at the time, plainly, as a reshuffle carried out behind closed doors.

President Ali told the incoming officers that “sacred trust” accompanies public office. He warned that procurement breaches; including officials’ involvement with multiple companies or circumventing transparency laws — would mean immediate removal. Vice President Jagdeo added that every dollar of public expenditure must be measured strictly against its contribution to national development and citizen welfare. Artificial intelligence, the government said, would be deployed to monitor procurement in real time.

It was, in other words, exactly the speech Jagdeo delivered again on September 7.

The cast was the same. The warnings were the same. The only thing missing the second time around was any accounting of what had happened to the first mandate in the sixteen weeks between.

A SELECTION PROCESS, NOT A HIRING PROCESS

It is worth being precise about what actually happened in May, because the government’s own framing invites a mistake. These were not appointments drawn from a competitive, merit-vetted civil service pipeline. They were political selections, made directly by the President and Vice President in a closed session, with no published criteria and no disclosed rationale for who was chosen over whom.

The public was told who the new officers were. It was never told why those particular people, and not others, were judged fit to hold what the President himself was, in the same breath, calling a sacred trust.

The one public objection on record came from APNU’s Terrence Campbell, who questioned at the time whether the dismissals had been handled with fairness and due process. It went nowhere. No lawsuit followed. No grievance was lodged with the Guyana Public Service Union. No matter was referred to the Public Service Commission, the constitutional body actually vested with authority over such appointments. This stands in contrast to a comparable case in 2020, when the termination of a Permanent Secretary drew a formal union challenge on precisely those constitutional grounds. This time, an objection was raised in public and answered with silence — which is to say, the safeguard did not merely fail. It was never invoked.

“Sacred trust” was declared, not demonstrated. What follows is a test of whether it meant anything at all.

THE CASE THAT BREAKS THE ARGUMENT

If the May reshuffle was, as the government insisted, a genuine correction — new people, held to a new standard, replacing officers who had failed that standard — then the clearest test of that claim is what the replacements actually did once installed.

Region Ten offers that test, and it fails.

Dr. Gregory Harris was named Regional Executive Officer for Region Ten in the May reshuffle, replacing Dwight John. John’s tenure had already produced the precise failure the “sacred trust” language was meant to foreclose: at an October 2025 statutory meeting, with the Regional Chairman vote tied, John suspended the process and deferred it to ministerial discretion rather than allow the council to resolve it — leaving Region Ten as the only administrative region in the country without an elected chairman following the 2025 regional elections.

Harris was supposed to end that impasse. He has instead continued it. On August 20, 2026, WIN’s nine elected Region Ten councillors served a formal Pre-Action Notice giving Harris forty-eight hours to reconvene the council meeting. He did not. Two days later, the councillors filed a Fixed Date Application in the High Court, naming Harris directly, to compel him to perform the same statutory duty his predecessor refused to perform. As of this writing, Region Ten remains without an elected Regional Chairman or Vice-Chairman — not under the officer the government removed, but under the one it chose to replace him.

This is not a matter of interpretation or motive. It is a matter of record: the replacement appointee is now the defendant in litigation over the exact conduct his appointment was supposed to correct.

WHAT THE SEQUENCE ACTUALLY SHOWS

None of this requires assuming that cronyism or nepotism drove the May selections, although the opacity of the process invites exactly that suspicion and does nothing to dispel it. The sequence stands on its own without needing a theory of motive attached to it:

A closed political process replaced a slate of public officers under the banner of accountability. The government attached specific, threatening language to the exercise — immediate removal for breaches, AI monitoring of procurement, every dollar measured against outcomes. At least one of the replacement officers has since been taken to the High Court for continuing, not correcting, the conduct that justified his predecessor’s removal. And sixteen weeks after the original mandate was announced, the Vice President stood in front of substantially the same audience and delivered substantially the same warning — with no public reckoning of what enforcement, if any, had occurred in the interim.

A government that must re-issue its own accountability mandate to the people it personally selected to carry it out, without ever explaining what became of the first mandate, is not demonstrating vigilance. It is demonstrating that the first mandate was never enforced — and that nothing structural has changed to ensure the second one will be either.

THE REAL VACANCY

Guyana’s public administration does not suffer from a shortage of proclamations about sacred trust, transparency, or consequences. It suffers from the absence of any mechanism, independent of the President and Vice President’s own discretion, that determines who is selected, who is removed, and what happens in between. Until that mechanism exists — open selection criteria, a functioning role for the Public Service Commission, and a public accounting of consequences actually applied — each new meeting at each new conference centre will do no more than restate the last one.

Region Ten’s empty chairmanship, four months into the officer chosen to fill it, is not an exception to that pattern. It is the pattern, in the one place where it happened to end up in court.

— The Board

 

GPL on the bandwagon -citizen bashing

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

GPL on the bandwagon -citizen bashing

OPINION BY: GHK LALL —September 2026

Somebody on the Board of Directors of the Guyana Power and Light Inc., (GPL) needs to listen to their conscience.  That is, if such has not been overtaken by cobweb and mildew.  They need to look at themselves in the mirror, then face their comrades in management.  Comrades they are, since PPP Govt blessing and Freedom House clearance have them where they are, keep them there.  The task: an injustice is being done to Guyanese.  Blamed for decades of GPL deteriorations.  After all the billions for upgrades, there’s still degrading of the ordinary consumers of energy in Guyana.  Relative to what’s going on with electricity supply, the GPL board should fire itself.

Somebody in GPL management should have the guts to tell his or her colleagues a simple, stark truth: the GPL has failed the Guyanese people.  Then tears that wound open by insulting them.  Constant blackouts caused by heavy use, overuse, of ACs, fans, lights.  Is somebody a complete jackass over there in the GPL management?  How many in Guyana’s human mass can afford an AC?  If they can, how many can afford to run it for any length of time?  I have backup facilities, and use of the AC for a limited period almost doubles the light bill. 

The PPP Govt cannot want business to drive the engine of the economy, then give those businesses sand and molasses for their electricity tanks.  Also, many businesses, except newer and smaller ones, have their own generators.  So, what foolishness is this from the GPL?  Pointing a nasty finger at Guyanese struggling to stay cool, trying to preserve scarce food, and working to give the children a little light so that they can study.  For the board and management of the helpless and clueless GPL, how much electricity does a fan or an energy saver light bulb use?  Indeed, there is volume, because that’s all that the poor people in this country have.  Now the GPL faults them for blackouts.

I thought that it was the PPP who said that the PNC represented 28 years of darkness.  So, where’s the damn light under the PPP, now that it has taken over for decades? 

My recommendation to the president is that the entire GPL management should be fired on the spot.  The people can’t do worse.  Truth be told, the president should fire himself.

He has done nothing but talk big, then disappeared to wherever catches his fancy, and in the company of people, that I would hold my nose against and turn my face.  When is the Wales Gas-to-Energy going to be in operation?  At this dark and desperate point, all that Guyanese want to know is when the extra megawatts will be live.  The PPP of Ali and Jagdeo can keep the half price money.  Just deliver the megs, so that Guyanese can get some relief, and there is an end to people cursing them for causing blackouts. 

How the hell can they cause blackouts when they exist in nothing but blackouts?  Somebody in the GPL, in the PPP hierarchy, in the PPP apology department answer that one to the satisfaction of the people.  Not I, the people.

 The GPL is now like a low streetwalker (censors say no word beginning with a w [which sounds like h]).  He or she finds fault with everyone and everywhere for their naked peddling of flesh for a shilling.  Recall the GPL.  Blackouts caused by contractors.  Blackout(s) caused by a Chinese operator.  Blackouts the result of a runaway minibus.  Blackouts the product of a racing truck.  Blackouts traced to transmission wires, and leaning lan-tun posts.  Blackouts due to the flaws and failures of everybody, except the GPL, and a dirty, decayed PPP Govt.

Now to top it all off, the GPL delivers a high voltage shock to John and Mary Public: They are responsible for blackouts.  It is why I am so much for the return of the cat o’ nine tails, public flogging, and stocks.  And those English bonfires.  I like the Chinese way: one final sendoff for the inefficient, incompetent, and those whose hands have hair.

No Capacity, No Rules

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

   No Capacity, No Rules

OPINION BY: Hem Kumar– September 2026

The Amerindian Peoples Association says Guyana never consulted them on uranium exploration at Kurupung. A former head of the EPA says the country couldn’t safely oversee it even if it had.

“Guyana has no capacity whatsoever to oversee any area of uranium mining and long term monitoring.” — Dr. Vincent Adams, former EPA Executive Director

Two letters, a week apart, made the same demand from different directions.

The first came from the Amerindian Peoples Association and Indigenous leaders in Region Seven, addressed directly to Environmental Protection Agency Executive Director Khemraj Parsram. It asked the EPA to rescind the Environmental Management Plan for U92 Energy Corp.’s Kurupung uranium project, if one has already been issued, and to suspend review of any related applications until the affected community has been properly engaged. “It is highly demeaning for our people to have to be obtaining all information and communication on this potentially dangerous project, from the media,” the letter states.

The second, effectively, came from Dr. Vincent Adams — a former Executive Director of that same EPA, and, before that, the United States’ representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency on precisely this class of problem. Asked directly whether Guyana has the capacity to oversee uranium mining and its long-term aftermath, his answer left no room for qualification: “Guyana has no capacity whatsoever to oversee any area of uranium mining and long term monitoring.”

Read together, the two documents are not two separate objections. They are one argument, made twice, from a community asking to be heard and an expert confirming that even if they are, the state behind the listening has nothing to hear it with.

WHAT THE COMMUNITY IS ASKING FOR

The APA’s letter is procedural in the most literal sense — it invokes the actual text of the law. Part IV of the Environmental Protection Act requires a developer to disclose a project’s “possible effects on the environment,” and where those effects are unclear, requires the EPA to publish its reasoning in a daily newspaper on whether a full Environmental Impact Assessment is needed, with an explicit right for any affected person to appeal that decision to the Environmental Assessment Board.

None of that happened, according to the letter. No newspaper notice. No opportunity to engage. No opportunity to appeal. The community says it learned of the project’s advance from an August 7, 2026 Kaieteur News article in which the developer said drilling would begin in August “following receipt of the EPA’s approval of the environmental management plan” — a claim the letter formally asks Parsram to confirm or deny, because as far as the signatories know, no such approval has been made public.

The letter also surfaces a detail that has not, to this publication’s knowledge, been previously reported: it states that 55 miles of radioactively contaminated core samples from historical exploration work have been sitting in storage for decades, with no communication to the community about their presence, their condition, or the exposure risk they may pose to children, pregnant women, animals, and the rivers, creeks and farmland the community depends on. This publication has not independently verified the extent or current custody of that material, and is continuing to investigate — but the claim itself, from Indigenous leaders formally petitioning the national environmental regulator, is a matter of public record as of this letter.

This is the same governance gap this publication documented in “No Consent, No Rules”: Kurupung’s 92.2 square kilometres are classified as state land, not titled Amerindian territory, so the Amerindian Act’s consent provisions never formally engage;  even though APA says the project sits on the ancestral territory of the Kapohn (Akawaio) and Pemon Peoples. What the EPA letter adds is that even the generic, non-Indigenous-specific safeguards written into the EPA Act — public notice, a chance to comment, a right to appeal — appear also not to have been followed.

The community was not excluded only from a consent standard tailored to Indigenous rights. It says it was excluded from the ordinary process owed to any Guyanese citizen.

WHAT THE EXPERT SAYS ABOUT WHETHER IT WOULD MATTER ANYWAY

Adams’s letter to EPA , and his answers to this publication’s questions, go further than procedure. His argument is that even a perfectly followed consultation process would sit on top of a regulatory system with no ability to actually manage what it is approving.

His authority to say so is not casual. Adams was selected by the IAEA to plan and chair its 2009 international conference on remediation of land contaminated by radioactive material — a gathering in Kazakhstan that drew over 300 professionals from more than 60 countries, alongside NATO, the World Health Organization, the World Bank and the UN Development Programme. He was later responsible, in the United States, for characterizing and cleaning up uranium mining sites nationally, work that required standing up three separate federal programs — the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program, the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, and the Office of Legacy Management — to monitor engineered burial sites indefinitely. Guyana, he notes, was not among the countries the IAEA trained in the wake of that 2009 conference, “for obvious reasons”: it had no uranium industry to speak of at the time.

Asked what specifically is missing, Adams did not describe a country merely short of equipment. “Just having instruments whether properly calibrated or not doesn’t mean anything if you don’t understand what the instruments are telling you and how to respond,” he said. He was equally direct that the gap is not confined to government: U92 itself, he said, is a two-year-old company that “has also demonstrated no adequate knowledge nor experience in uranium operations” — leaving Guyana, in his assessment, in a position comparable to its relationship with ExxonMobil, dependent on the operator’s own representations about the very risks it is being asked to regulate.

Confirmed by this publication in earlier reporting: the performance bond currently held by the state against the Kurupung project is US$104,542. Adams said he was not previously aware of that figure, but called it “ludicrous” regardless of whether it is meant to cover exploration or eventual production. His reasoning centers on what happens if something goes wrong: unlike ExxonMobil, he said, U92 has no assets of scale to draw against in a major incident, which means the operative question is not what bond is adequate but who absorbs the cost if the company cannot. “Who covers the cost if a disaster occurs and they declare bankruptcy and walk away,” he asked, “leaving the Amerindian community with their livelihood that has been destroyed?”

Adams also confirmed, on the record, that no uranium or radioactive-minerals application of any kind reached the EPA during his own tenure as its Executive Director. Kurupung is not simply an under-resourced case. It is the first case of its kind the agency has ever had to handle

TWO DEMANDS, ONE ANSWER OWED

The APA has asked the EPA to rescind the environmental management plan and pause every related review until the community is properly consulted. Adams has asked, separately, that his own expertise be brought to bear on a project he says the government currently has no internal capacity to evaluate on its own terms.

Neither demand requires the other to be resolved first. A community’s right to be consulted before a uranium project advances on its ancestral land does not depend on whether the state is technically competent to regulate that project — and a regulator’s technical incompetence does not excuse it from the consultation the law already requires. But together, the two letters describe a project moving forward on a double absence: no meaningful engagement with the people whose land and water are at stake, and, by the account of the one Guyanese official who has actually chaired an international body on this exact hazard, no capacity to catch what that absence of engagement might miss.

The EPA has not yet responded publicly to either letter. This publication has asked Executive Director Parsram to confirm whether the Kurupung environmental management plan has been approved, and will update this report with any response received.

— The Board

The Donroe Doctrine: Crushing Communism by Handing the Oil to the Man Who Helped Loot It

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592 GUARDIAN◊ACCOUNTABILITY◊INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM◊GUYANA

The Donroe Doctrine: Crushing Communism by Handing the Oil to the Man Who Helped Loot It

OPINION BY:Hem Kumar September 2026

Washington calls it liberation. The ledger says otherwise — and Georgetown should be taking notes.

A Fox News column published this week asks Venezuela’s critics to accept a simple trade: the United States takes a generational — perhaps century-long; claim on 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan crude, and in exchange, communism dies in the hemisphere. The argument is dressed in the language of liberation. Stripped of its rhetoric, it is a resource-transfer agreement, negotiated with an unelected interim government, defended in advance against the very objection it cannot answer: whose oil is this, and who authorized its sale?

The interim president who “confirmed the core terms” is not a democratic reformer parachuted in to clean house. She served as Vice President under Nicolás Maduro. She sat inside the same ruling apparatus the column spends a thousand words denouncing as a Cuban-captured kleptocracy. The essay wants readers to believe the rot was personal to Maduro and that removing him cleared the machine. It did not name who now runs the machine, or what she did inside it for years before inheriting the safe.

That is not incidental. It is the whole scheme. A regime figure signs away 17 strategic oil fields for a term measured in generations, under the cover of an emergency that her own government helped create, and the American press is asked to call this “crushing communism’s grip.” The grip is not being crushed. It is changing hands.

THE SEQUENCE TELLS THE STORY

The column itself lays out the plan in three phases: stabilization, recovery, transition. Read that order again. Contracts and capital come first. Elections come last — vaguely, conditionally, as something a “future democratic congress” might one day ratify. Not authorize. Ratify. The distinction matters: ratification is what a legislature does to bless a deal it had no part in negotiating. The oil is spoken for before a single Venezuelan casts a vote on the terms.

Even the essay’s own defenders admit the legal architecture doesn’t exist yet. There is no disclosed instrument — no published production-sharing agreement, no concession terms, no equity structure — only phrases like “a secured interest” and “strategic fields.” A $100 billion, multi-decade claim on a nation’s primary resource, negotiated in the dark, is not a foundation for democracy. It is the oldest pattern in extractive politics: the paperwork arrives after the asset is already gone.

And the safeguards the column calls for oil proceeds “fenced off from the old patronage machine and audited,” an “electoral calendar,” courts “not controlled by the ruling party” — are written as demands, not achievements. By the piece’s own admission, none of it exists yet. The deal is signed. The guardrails are a wish list appended afterward.

GUYANA HAS SEEN THIS FILM

Guyanese readers do not need a hypothetical to understand where this goes. This publication has spent months documenting it in “The Stabroek Surrender,” our series on the 2016 ExxonMobil Production Sharing Agreement — a contract negotiated without competitive bidding, without ring-fencing between cost pools, without a decommissioning fund backed by parent-company guarantees, and defended today under the same phrase Washington and Caracas are now recycling: sanctity of contract.

Guyana’s own government has shown exactly how selective that sanctity is. President Ali argued for renegotiating the Stabroek PSA in 2020, before he held the office that could act on it. In 2026, holding that office, he refuses — while his administration has quietly missed audit deadlines and never conducted the gas feasibility study the contract itself requires. Sanctity of contract, in practice, is enforced against the public and waived for the operator. Christopher Ram’s Article 32.1 argument — that renegotiation requires only the counterparty’s consent, not some legal impossibility; remains unanswered by the government that invokes “sanctity” as though it were scripture rather than a choice.

That is the actual lesson Venezuela offers Georgetown: not that foreign capital is inherently predatory, but that a resource contract signed under emergency conditions, defended with patriotic language, and shielded from renegotiation by officials who benefit from the status quo, does not stay temporary. It becomes permanent by design. Uaru, Whiptail and Hammerhead — $32.2 billion in new Guyanese projects — are entering the same undivided, unring-fenced cost pool that just finished absorbing $55 billion in recoverable costs before the state saw its promised 50% share. The infrastructure of Guyana’s own oil sector was built to make exactly the kind of “temporary emergency” arrangement Venezuela is being sold now.

THE TEST THAT MATTERS

Strip away the anti-communist framing and ask the only question that determines whether any resource deal — Caracas or Georgetown — serves the public: who can undo it, and on whose terms?

In Venezuela, the answer today is no one, until a congress that never negotiated the deal is asked to ratify it after the fact. In Guyana, the answer has been no one, for a decade, because “sanctity of contract” has been deployed to foreclose the very renegotiation the government itself once demanded.

A deal that cannot be reopened by the people who will live with its consequences is not liberation. It is custody. Whether the jailer wears the colors of Washington or Houston makes no difference to the country whose ground it comes from.

— The Board

The Penalty That Never Comes

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 592 GUARDIAN◊ACCOUNTABILITY◊INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM◊GUYANA

The Penalty That Never Comes

INVESTIGATION · WALES GAS-TO-ENERGY

Lindsayca’s insolvency warning is the third act of a script Guyana keeps refusing to end— while Guyanese are made to pay the price–faced with incessant blackouts that never seem to end.

OPINION BY : Editor – September 2026

By September’s end, Lindsayca Guyana Inc; the contractor entrusted with the single largest infrastructure undertaking in this country’s history — is projected to run out of money. Kaieteur News reports the company has asked the Government of Guyana for approximately US$170 million more, a 22 percent markup on its original US$759 million contract, and has proposed converting a fixed-price construction agreement into a cost-plus arrangement: an open tab, paid for by the Guyanese public, for a company that has now missed its delivery date at least twice.

None of this is new. What is worth naming is the pattern underneath it.

A CLAUSE WITH TEETH, VOLUNTARILY PULLED

In May 2026, when government and Lindsayca settled a Dispute Avoidance–Adjudication Board ruling over defective soil conditions at the Wales site, the resolution did more than add US$97 million to the contract price. Buried in the Prime Minister’s own announcement was this: both parties agreed to forgo the respective rights to historical liquidated damages, capped at 10 percent of the contract price. In plain terms, government surrendered its own contractual leverage — the financial penalty built into the agreement specifically to punish delay — in exchange for closing out one dispute.

That is not a government that forgot it had a stick. It is a government that put the stick down

THEN THE NEXT DELAY ARRIVED, AND THE STICK STAYED DOWN

By August 25, with a fresh deadline slipping, Prime Minister Mark Phillips told the country government was still deciding whether to penalize the contractor at all, choosing instead to give the company “an opportunity to deliver” toward a December 2026 target for partial power. Kaieteur News has separately reported the cumulative cost of the project’s two-year delay at close to US$884 million above the base cost of the plants themselves — paid for in higher fuel-import costs and continued reliance on rented power-ship electricity, not recovered from the company responsible.

No consequence has yet attached to two years of missed deadlines and a nine-figure funding shortfall — even as the same contractor is shortlisted for more work.

AND NOW, A THIRD ACT

Kaieteur’s reporting adds the financial endgame to the delay story: a contractor reportedly out of money, requesting nearly a quarter of its original contract value on top of what it has already been paid, while simultaneously being considered — according to Kaieteur’s sources — for two-thirds of Phase Two of the same project. That arrangement is reported to be partly designed to fold Phase One’s shortfall into a new, larger contract rather than resolve it as what it is.

At the same time the company pleads insolvency to Georgetown, its balance sheet has evidently supported six-figure sponsorships of Venezuelan golf tournaments, energy conferences in Caracas and Houston, and cultural philanthropy in Texas — spending priorities that sit uneasily beside a request for emergency public financing.

THE ACCOUNTABILITY QUESTION

This is not simply a story about cost overruns, which are common to large infrastructure projects everywhere. It is a story about a government that has, twice now, had a contractual instrument to hold a non-performing contractor to account, and twice declined to use it — first by trading it away in a settlement, then by choosing patience over consequence when the next deadline came due. Guyanese ratepayers are being asked to fund the difference both times: once through a higher contract price, and now potentially through a fundamentally restructured payment arrangement that removes the fixed-price protection altogether.

The public record does not yet show a formal default or termination clause distinct from the liquidated-damages provision already waived — if one exists, it too appears un-invoked. Either way, the operative fact is the same: no consequence has yet attached to two years of missed deadlines and a nine-figure funding shortfall, even as the same contractor is shortlisted for more work.

TIMELINE: THE ESCALATING ASK

Date                                             Development
Nov. 2022 CH4.Lindsayca awarded EPC contract for Wales GTE US$759M.
Jul. 2025 CH4 exits the consortium; Lindsayca commits to complete the project alone.
Jan. 2025-DAB ruling Apr 2026 Kaieteur reports Lindsayca seeking US$250M more; government disputes/denies an US$80M secret payment.
May 2026 Government confirms US$97M settlement (12.8% increase) for soil-stabilisation defects — and both parties waive rights to historical liquidated damages, capped at 10% of contract price
Aug.2026 PM Phillips says government still deciding on penalties for renewed delay; Lindsayca reportedly shortlisted for two-thirds of Phase Two (≈US$353.4M) while Phase One remains unresolved.
Sep. 2026 Lindsayca reportedly nearing insolvency by month’s end; requests ≈US$170M more (22% above original sum) and proposes converting the fixed-price contract to cost-plus.

QUESTIONS THE GUARDIAN IS PUTTING TO THE GTE TASKFORCE, THE MINISTRY OF FINANCE, AND THE OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER

  1. Does the EPC contract with Lindsayca contain a default or termination clause distinct from the liquidated-damages provision waived in May, and has it ever been considered?
  2. What specific undertakings has Lindsayca given regarding its ability to complete the project without an equity or debt infusion, and has government sought independent verification of the company’s financial position?
  3. If the fixed-price EPC structure is converted to cost-plus, what mechanism will cap the state’s exposure to further cost growth?
  4. On what basis is Lindsayca being considered for Phase Two while Phase One remains unresolved and the company reports insolvency risk?

— The Board

Guyana’s 39.8% Share: Temporary Gain, Lasting Questions

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

Guyana’s 39.8% Share: Temporary Gain, Lasting Questions

OPINION BY: Dr. Vincent Adams September 2026

39.8% profit share means Ring Fencing but short-lived with many questions – looks fishy! – Dr. Adams

There has been an array of public missives about the welcomed oil profit share to Guyana being more than tripled to 39.8%, or approximately G$8 Billion (B) per day at the current production rate and oil price. However, what seems to be missed is that this is unadulterated ring-fencing, proving that contrary to the Govt’s falsity, the contract does not disallow ring-fencing, as yours truly stressed in letter “Nothing in oil contract bars ring-fencing” published in the broad media including Kaieteur News (KN) June 14, 2025 edition.

That was the good news, but something seems fishy going on here with lots of questions, signaling that the 39.8% is most likely short-lived as evident by the fact that the numbers do not add up; and by HE President Ali’s head spinning convoluted press conference.

 There should be no doubts whatsoever that Exxon notified President Ali of the increase before it made the news, and it goes without saying that any Leader would be jumping up and down shouting from the rooftops grabbing credit and scoring political points for such good news. However, beyond belief, it had to take weeks of public pressure to force Dr. Ali into doing the normal— and when he did, his uneasiness was most noticeable, when, instead of a gleeful announcement— he inexplicably first went on the defensive, taking great pains to lecture us on how the profit share formula works, and being emphatic that the contract was not changed to bring about the increase. What was this uncalled-for defensive posture about?

Ali’s strange behavior begs the question: was this just a shrewd business move by Exxon to boost its stock price and financial leverage which caught Ali by surprise, embarrassing and throwing him under the bus, since his Govt has been berating and making enemies of all and sundry who dare to advocate ring-fencing and —or renegotiations? Ask Glen Lall who made fierce fighting for ring-fencing and renegotiations his daily ritual to the nation.     

The ring-fencing and renegotiations question:

Most revealing was Dr. Ali’s disorienting answer to a question from Davina Bagot of KN about whether he will take this opportunity to renegotiate the contract to ensure the profit share remains at 39.8%. Amazingly not prepared for such an expectedly inevitable question, Ali resorted to confusingly speak from both sides of his mouth that he is having “internal discussions” and seeking expert advice how to “get greater benefits” while at the same time spouting his old song and dance of “sanctity of contract”.

First, despite what VP Jagdeo believes, Guyanese are not stupid, and know fully well that Exxon is the Govt’s only advisor and controller, so the “discussions” start and end how Exxon wants it. Second, how could the President still not comprehend that “greater benefits” beyond ring-fencing can only come with renegotiations which he and his Govt pledge not to do? Third, this is the same Ali and oil czar Jagdeo, who vow to never renegotiate because of “contract sanctity” and cowardly to even raise it with Exxon, though allowed for in Article 32 of the contract; and despite their manifesto promise and their rabid admonition that it is the worst contract ever, so, renegotiation will be of highest priority when in office. 

The President now finds himself in a bind knowing that this increase is temporary and would be a hard sell to the people; thus, to soften the blow of this bad news, he slickly comes up with fancy talk about “discussions with experts” for “path forward to get greater benefits”. Notwithstanding Exxon being his only expert and advisor, the President is still advised that there is nothing more to discuss nor think about, since the precedent for ring-fencing has now been set, whether or not motivated by Exxon’s financial interests, and must stay in place. Any drawing of a line at the end of any project is the definition of ring-fencing; so, there can be no going back!

Moreso, the President must demand that this new dispensation be retroactively dated back to the first ring-fencing point in 2022 when the first project (Liza 1) was truly paid off, along with recovery of the 39.8% worth of USD $B owed to the country since that time.

Costs do not add up:

Ring fencing means each project having its own independent cost bank (all monies charged to that project) and no use of revenues from any project to offset costs in another project. Despite the contract not barring ring-fencing, the Govt gives Exxon a free rein to mix-up all of the revenues and spending into one bucket or “cost bank” being filled with the daily running costs from every project including the USD $55 B costs announced on July 31, 2026, to have been paid off for the 1st 7 projects; but most conspicuously suspicious is that there is no mention that  the paid off cost bank also includes all costs running into USD $B for drilling exploration and appraisal wells and other costs for projects 8 & 9 already submitted to the Govt early this year for approval. 

It takes years of drilling exploration and appraisal wells and other activities such as preparing Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) before applying for Govt approvals. For example, the Liza 1 was discovered in 2015, but it took years of drilling before discovery and over one year afterwards to apply for permits. Similarly, since applications for permits for projects 8 & 9 were submitted early in 2026, there had to have been many USD $B charged to the cost bank at least starting in 2025 and before for those two projects.

The quandary facing the President and maybe why he has been so bashful, is that if there is no ring-fencing, how could there be a claim that the cost bank of USD $55 B was paid off for only the 1st 7 projects, when projects 8 & 9 have been also charging their costs to this same cost bank.

The Govt must explain how is this possible, and come clean with what are the costs left in the cost bank for projects 8 & 9, other projects in the works, and the cumulative costs carried over every month above the 75% cost oil.

 It gets more confusing when the President and Minister Bharrat acclaim that the cost bank includes expenses for both capital (Capex) and operating (Opex) equivalent to the 75% cost oil; but something else kept quiet is that the 75% cost oil is not the maximum deducted recoverable costs, for all costs above the 75% are carried over into the next month, month after month, into the cost bank.

In any case, if the Opex is 20 barrels oil out of each 100 barrels according to the President, it means that the Capex accounts for the other 55 or 73.3% of the 75 barrels of cost oil or cost bank. Thence, the USD $55 B supposedly paid off for the 1st 7 projects will have been proportionally divided into USD $40 B for Capex and $15 B for Opex. However, the Field Development Plans (FDPs) which are the heart of the projects, document a total estimated Capex of USD $61 B.

With Exxon’s project management expertise, it is hard to digest that their estimated Capex could be a whopping 52% higher than the actual costs, unless the Guyana Govt happens to be managing their projects. This looks like something fishy going on here with the people’s money that must be explained. 

 Editors Note:

This opinion piece  raises significant questions about the recent announcement that Guyana’s share of petroleum revenues has risen to approximately 39.8%, reportedly equivalent to about GY $8 billion daily at prevailing production levels and oil prices. Its central contention is that the increase reflects, in practical effect, project-level ring-fencing—despite the Government’s longstanding position that the Stabroek Block Production Sharing Agreement does not permit it.

The writer argues that, once the recoverable costs of the first seven developments have been satisfied, revenue from those projects is no longer being used to recover costs associated with other developments.

If so, this would resemble ring-fencing a system under which each petroleum project carries and recovers its own costs, rather than permitting costs from new projects to be recovered against production revenues from older, already-producing projects.

The article identifies several issues requiring clear, documented answers from Government and the Stabroek Block contractors:

♦ Whether the 39.8% share results from a formal change in cost-recovery treatment, a project-specific accounting outcome, or a temporary condition caused by the timing of expenditures and production.

♦ Whether the announced approximately US $55 billion in recovered costs relates strictly to the first seven projects, and precisely what categories of expenditure it includes.

♦ Whether exploration, appraisal, engineering, environmental, pre-development, drilling, procurement, and other costs associated with proposed Projects 8 and 9 have been charged to the existing Stabroek Block cost bank.

♦ The present balance of unrecovered costs, broken down by project, activity, and month, including all expenditures carried forward because recoverable costs exceeded the 75% monthly cost-oil ceiling.

♦ Whether the stated cost bank contains both capital expenditure (Capex) and operating expenditure (Opex), and what amount is attributable to each category.

♦ How the reported US $55 billion recovered-cost figure compares with the capital-cost estimates contained in the approved Field Development Plans for the first seven projects.

♦ Whether Government intends to preserve the 39.8% share through a negotiated project-level ring-fencing arrangement, and whether it will seek a review under Article 32 of the petroleum agreement.

Under the Stabroek Block agreement, up to 75 % of petroleum produced in a month may be allocated to “cost oil,” subject to the agreement’s rules, while the remaining “profit oil” is shared equally between Guyana and the contractor group. Because Guyana also receives a  2% royalty calculated on gross production, the country’s effective share rises materially when recoverable costs fall below the maximum cost-oil allocation. The exact share therefore depends on actual production, realized oil prices, royalty treatment, recoverable costs, and any carried-forward cost balance.

The 39.8% figure should therefore be accompanied by  transparent public accounting. This should include the calculation methodology, the period to which it applies, the assumed production volumes and oil price, the cost-oil percentage actually claimed, the amount of unrecovered costs carried forward, and a project-by-project reconciliation of costs and revenues.

Without those disclosures, the public cannot determine whether the increase represents a durable improvement in Guyana’s take, a temporary accounting outcome, or an arrangement that effectively applies ring-fencing to only part of the development portfolio.

The issue is not merely technical. It goes to whether Guyana is receiving the maximum benefit from a finite national resource, whether the country’s petroleum accounting is sufficiently transparent, and whether the Government’s public explanations are consistent with the actual treatment of costs across the Stabroek Block.

For more on the agreement:   https://petroleum.gov.gy/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Petroleum-Agreement-Oct-7-2016_2.pdf 

Three Spines, One Bill: Making Sense of the Congress Place Tax Fight

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592 GUARDIAN◊ACCOUNTABILITY◊INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM◊GUYANA

 Three Spines, One Bill: Making Sense of the Congress Place Tax Fight

The 592 Guardian Editorial Board

Georgetown’s City Council has cleared the way for the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) to settle a rates and taxes bill on Congress Place, its Sophia headquarters, for roughly $30 million — against a debt that Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo says had climbed past $6.7 billion. Attorney General Anil Nandlall has called the decision “absolutely illegal” and invited any taxpayer to sue. A reader pushed back on us directly: the council has non-PNCR members too, nothing happens there without other parties in the room, and if bias is the standard, then every tax authority that ever cut anyone a break; the GRA included — should be just as exposed.

That challenge deserves a straight answer rather than a reflexive defense of the Attorney General. Having read the record closely, our view is that the reader is right about one thing and wrong about a bigger one  and that Nandlall’s own framing overreaches in a way worth naming plainly. There are three separate legal questions tangled together in this story, and they don’t all stand or fall together. Separating them is the only way to see which parts of the argument survive contact with the facts.

SPINE ONE: DID THE COUNCIL ACTUALLY HAVE THE POWER TO DO THIS?

This is the most basic question, and it is Nandlall’s strongest ground. A city council is not a private business free to strike whatever deal it likes with a debtor. It is a creature of statute — its power to set, collect, and adjust rates and taxes comes entirely from the Municipal and District Councils Act. It can only do what that Act allows.

The trouble is that Georgetown’s own mayor, Alfred Mentore, could not say with confidence which legal instrument actually authorizes this specific write-down. In comments to the Guyana Chronicle, he pointed to two different, competing possibilities: a 2024 “institutional rates” policy the PNCR-led council passed for political party properties, or a separate 2021 High Court ruling that found it “unconscionable” for the council to charge compound interest instead of simple interest on old debts.

A public official who cannot say which law authorized a multi-billion-dollar write-down has, in effect, conceded the illegality question before anyone gets to court.

That distinction is not a technicality. If the true basis is the 2021 compound-interest ruling, the council would be applying a general principle of fairness that any debtor — PNCR-linked or not— could equally claim, and Nandlall’s illegality argument gets much weaker. If the true basis is the 2024 institutional rates policy, the question becomes whether that policy was validly made in the first place.

Either way, a mayor unable to name the operative authority for a decision of this size is not a small detail. It is the story.

SPINE TWO: WAS THE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS TAINTED BY CONFLICT OF INTEREST?

The reader’s strongest point is procedural: the council is not made up solely of the PNCR. Other parties sit there too, and nothing passes without going through the room. That is true, and it matters — but the record shows it does not do the work the reader wants it to do.

The only clear vote on record is the 2024 institutional rates policy, and it was not a consensus decision. It was laid before the council at a statutory meeting and immediately opposed by the PPP-C’s 11 councillors, who said they had not been consulted and were blindsided by how quickly it moved. It passed anyway, because the PNCR held the numbers where it counted — including on the council’s Finance Committee, where PPP-C held a single seat against a PNCR majority. Three councillors — Alfonso De Armas, Patricia Chase-Greene and Steven Jacobs  publicly rejected the idea of waiving taxes for political parties at all, with Chase-Greene, a former mayor, arguing every party should pay exactly as ordinary citizens do.

This is why “other parties were in the room” does not neutralise a bias claim. The legal principle at stake — nemo judex in causa sua, no one may be a judge in their own cause — is not about whether dissent existed. It is about whether the body that controls the outcome is the same body that benefits from it. Losing a vote you were blindsided by is not participation in a fair process; on this record, it is evidence the process wasn’t one.

SPINE THREE: WHO ACTUALLY GOT TREATED UNEQUALLY?

This is where the reader’s underlying instinct — that selective tax relief is normal and everyone does it deserves to be taken seriously, because it identifies the one comparison that is genuinely apples-to-apples. Nandlall’s line that “any taxpayer can file legal proceedings tomorrow” overstates this. Guyanese law generally requires a claimant to show sufficient personal interest in a decision, not just general public concern, so a random ratepayer with no connection to the debt is not obviously best placed to sue.

But the council’s own paperwork hands a much stronger comparator to a specific class of person. When the council implemented the 2021 compound-interest ruling retroactively to 1997 this past July, it built in a carve-out: anyone who had already paid off their debt calculated under the old, harsher compound-interest method would not benefit from the correction. In plain terms — pay on time under the old rules, and you get nothing; owe a fortune and stay unpaid long enough, and the council will eventually adjust the rules in your favour. That is not a hypothetical the reader raised for effect. It is the council’s own written policy, and it is the one place in this whole dispute where a specific, identifiable group of taxpayers can point to differential treatment by the same authority, under the same policy, without needing to prove anyone’s state of mind.

WHERE THAT LEAVES THE ARGUMENT

SPINE WHAT IT REQUIRES WHERE IT STANDS
Vires -( lawful power) Council must point to a specific statutory basis Unresolved -two competing bases, unclear which applies
Bias -natural justice Decision makers must not be judges in their own cause  Strong -PNCR passes without PPP-C  Consensus
Discriminatory application comprables treated differently under the same rule strong but narrower – early payers excluded by council’s own ruling

None of this makes Nandlall’s “absolutely illegal” a settled legal fact  that is for a court to decide, and his “any taxpayer” framing reaches further than the law on standing likely allows. But it also does not make the reader’s comparison to routine GRA concessions hold. A revenue officer using statutory discretion Parliament gave them is not the same thing as a governing majority relieving a debt owed by the organisation that majority answers to, then writing a rule that specifically excludes the citizens who paid on time. The GRA analogy fails not because concessions are always suspect, but because it erases the one fact that makes this case different: who was sitting in judgment, and who they were judging.

— The Board

Cameras Are More Than Silent Witnesses

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

Cameras Are More Than Silent Witnesses

OPINION BY : Hem Kumar September 2026

Guyana’s conversation about public-security cameras has too often remained at the shallowest level: where cameras are mounted, how many are installed, and whether footage might be available after a robbery, shooting, accident or other crime.

But modern surveillance systems, when properly designed and responsibly managed, can be far more than passive recording devices. They can become active public-safety tools; helping police identify wanted suspects, trace vehicles, locate missing people, detect violence, secure major events, protect vulnerable citizens and preserve evidence that can stand up in court.

The first day of London’s 2026 Notting Hill Carnival offers a timely example. At one of Europe’s largest street festivals, the Metropolitan Police combined officers on the ground, portable walk-through metal detectors, intelligence-led operations and live facial-recognition technology. By Sunday evening, of 169 reported arrests ,police said facial recognition had helped lead to 29 arrests and the identification of 26 registered sex offenders in attendance. Three were arrested for alleged breaches of their conditions.

The point is not that Guyana should automatically copy London, deploy facial recognition everywhere, or sacrifice privacy in the name of security. Facial recognition remains controversial, including because of legitimate concerns about privacy, accuracy, possible bias, data retention and misuse by state agencies.

But neither should Guyanese dismiss surveillance systems as little more than decorative poles, occasional CCTV footage, or a tool useful only after tragedy has occurred. London’s experience illustrates their potential versatility when technology is carefully deployed, integrated into an operational plan, linked to trained personnel and supported by a rapid response.

A camera on its own cannot stop a crime. It cannot make an arrest, recover a weapon, interview a witness or successfully prosecute an offender. But it can alert authorities to danger, help identify a suspect in real time, guide patrols to an unfolding incident, trace a suspect’s route, verify an alibi, locate a stolen vehicle or provide crucial evidence in court.

At a crowded public event, cameras can help security officials spot abandoned items, detect unusual crowd movement, identify access points that need reinforcement and direct emergency services where they are needed. Along major roadways, systems equipped with number-plate recognition can help trace stolen or suspect vehicles, identify dangerous driving patterns and support accident investigations. Around schools, hospitals, markets, transport hubs and government buildings, they can strengthen deterrence and shorten response time when serious incidents occur.

Guyana, which continues to confront violent crime, road fatalities, trafficking concerns, domestic violence, robberies and the security pressures that accompany rapid economic growth, should have an informed national discussion about what its surveillance infrastructure can—and cannot—do.

That discussion must begin with transparency . The public should know how many state-linked cameras are actually functional; where they are located; whether they are monitored live; which agency controls the systems; who is authorized to access footage; how long recordings are kept; and how often the footage has assisted in arrests, prosecutions, missing-person cases, emergency response or the recovery of stolen property.

Government and law-enforcement agencies should also publish regular performance reports. Not general assurances. Not ceremonial announcements about new installations. The public needs measurable results: the number of incidents detected, the number of investigations assisted, arrests linked to footage, prosecutions supported, camera downtime, response times and the costs of operating and maintaining the system.

If advanced tools such as automated number-plate recognition or facial recognition are contemplated, the standards must be higher still. Their use should be governed by clear legislation, defined purposes, strict limits, independent oversight, human review before enforcement action, secure handling of data, reliable audit logs and meaningful remedies for abuse or error.

Surveillance must never become an instrument for monitoring political opponents, intimidating citizens, profiling communities or conducting unaccountable fishing expeditions. Public safety cannot be secured by giving any administration unchecked power to watch the public.The same technology that can help locate a violent offender can be abused if no one is required to explain how it operates or answer for misconduct.

That is why Guyana must reject the false choice between security and civil liberties. A mature system can protect both.

The real standard should be simple:

Effective technology, trained personnel, rapid response and transparent oversight lead to safer communities and public trust.

The world is moving beyond the era in which cameras merely recorded images for later review. Properly used, they can provide timely intelligence, guide police resources, support victims and strengthen the administration of justice.

Guyana should not be left behind. But it should also not move blindly. The country needs surveillance systems that work, evidence that proves they work, and laws and oversight strong enough to ensure that they serve the people rather than threaten them.

 

 

When The Guyana Marketing  Corporation Starts Selling Imported Chicken , Who Is Marketing Guyana?

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592 GUARDIAN◊ACCOUNTABILITY◊INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM◊GUYANA

When The Guyana Marketing  Corporation Starts Selling Imported Chicken , Who Is Marketing Guyana?

OPINION BY : Hem Kumar September 2026

There is something deeply wrong when an institution created to develop markets for Guyanese agriculture appears to be selling imported agricultural products to Guyanese consumers.

The photograph now circulating publicly shows what appears to be imported Brazilian chicken being distributed through an operation associated with the Guyana Marketing Corporation (GMC). The packaging is visibly in Portuguese, including the words “Frango sem Miúdos” — chicken without giblets.

That should prompt more than a casual glance. It should prompt a very simple question: When did the Guyana Marketing Corporation become a retailer and distributor of imported chicken?

 A MANDATE REWRITTEN WITHOUT NOTICE

According to GMC’s own website, its mandate is remarkably clear. The Corporation states that in 1985 there was a deliberate policy change resulting in the total cessation of its buying and selling operations. GMC was transformed into an institution focused on market facilitation for the private sector, local market development, market research, market intelligence, post-harvest technology, and the development and export of non-traditional agricultural produce.

Its current mission is even more explicit: “Facilitating and coordinating the development of quality non-traditional agricultural produce for export.” 

So what are we looking at today? If GMC is now importing chicken and retailing it, we have to ask whether the Corporation’s role has quietly been rewritten without the public being told.

FACILITATION IS NOT RETAIL

There may be a legitimate government reason for temporarily importing chicken. Recent government statements say imported chicken was intended to address temporary supply shortages and stabilize prices while protecting local poultry producers. The New GMC was reported as facilitating those imports.

But facilitating an emergency market intervention is one thing. Becoming a retailer of imported chicken is another. The distinction matters. GMC’s own advisory service says its job includes helping farmers understand market requirements, market-entry requirements, labelling, new markets, and the promotion of local produce.

WHY IS THIS CHICKEN NOT LABELLED IN ENGLISH?

That brings us to the second issue visible in the photograph: why is this chicken not labelled in English? This is not merely an aesthetic complaint about packaging.

Guyana’s Government Analyst–Food and Drug Department has previously warned importers, wholesalers and retailers that food products labelled in a foreign language should not be imported or sold on the local market, citing the Food and Drug Regulations’ labelling provisions under Regulation 18, which require label declarations to be in English.

The U.S. International Trade Administration’s current Guyana market guidance likewise states that all product labels must be in English, referencing Guyana’s labelling standards for pre-packaged foods.

Therefore, if the chicken shown in this photograph is being sold to Guyanese consumers through GMC, the public deserves an explanation.

Chicken packaging labeled in Portuguese at Mon Repos market.

♦Was the product properly approved for the Guyanese market?

♦Was an English-language label attached or provided?

♦Who imported it?

♦Who is the importer of record?

♦Who is responsible for ensuring compliance?

♦And why is a government agricultural marketing corporation involved in retailing it?

These are not hostile questions. They are accountability questions.

THE SIGNAL THIS SENDS TO GUYANESE FARMERS

Guyana says it wants to become food secure. It says it wants to expand agriculture. It says it wants farmers to produce more. It says it wants to develop agro-processing and export markets.

Then what message does it send to the poultry farmer when a government corporation established to support agricultural marketing is helping put imported chicken on the domestic market?

Government intervention may sometimes be necessary to protect consumers from excessive prices or temporary shortages. But such intervention must be surgical, transparent and temporary — not allowed to become a permanent substitute for fixing domestic production, storage, processing and distribution.

A government agency established to market Guyanese agriculture ends up marketing imported agriculture to Guyanese people. That is not agricultural transformation. That is managed dependency wearing an agricultural label.

 And there is another irony. GMC’s own website says the Corporation’s Guyana Shop was established to provide a platform for local agro-processors to market their products.

That is precisely what a public agricultural marketing institution should be doing: finding markets for the farmer, opening doors for the agro-processor, helping Guyanese products meet standards, building export capacity, and making “Made in Guyana, Grown in Guyana” mean something commercially. Not competing with the very producers it was established to help.

THE QUESTION THAT REMAINS

The question isn’t whether Guyanese consumers deserve reasonably priced chicken. Of course they do. The question is whether GMC is still doing the job Guyana created it to do.

If the government has deliberately expanded GMC’s mandate, tell the country. If this is merely a temporary emergency intervention, tell the country how long it will last and what safeguards protect local poultry producers. And if imported chicken can be sold through a government agricultural marketing institution without proper English labelling, the public is entitled to know why.

This board sees a possible mission drift. And when an institution stops doing the job it was created to do, the public has every right to ask: Who changed the mandate — and who gave them permission?

TWO PARADOXES WORTH NAMING

GMC is a public corporation with a distinct mandate: market Guyana’s products. Instead, we see it marketing imported chicken. Who flipped the script?

And there is a second, larger irony that has driven much of the public reaction to this photograph. Guyana has been described as self-sufficient in food production. That claim and this image cannot both be true in the way each has been presented. The public is entitled to ask which account is accurate — and who is responsible for the gap between the two.

Compounding the anomaly, the imported product is reported to be selling at a price below that of the locally produced chicken it is meant to supplement, not replace.

Too much tomfoolery.

AG Anil Nandlall hails Chris Ram

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592 GUARDIAN◊ACCOUNTABILITY◊INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM◊GUYANA

AG Anil Nandlall hails Chris Ram

OPINION BY : GHK LALL– September 2026
I have always said that Guyana’s Hon Attorney General, Anil Nandlall, SC, MP, is capable of exceptional moments, actually has one of them, occasionally.  I wished there were more, especially given the caliber of this son of Guyana.  Separately, there’s a learning opportunity in Mr. Nandlall’s example for Excellency Ali.  Yeah, I should know better: water on duck’s back.

Attorney Chris Ram AG Anil Nandlall

Mr. Nandlall picked as fine a spot as he could.  A public tribute, a powerful and persuasive word of thanks for Chartered Accountant and attorney-at-law, Chris Ram.  Apparently, Mr. Ram contributed heavily to the finalizing of the Law School now growing in Guyana. 

A monumental achievement, for this oil rich country; the best site for it to be located. 

If Mr. Nandlall would permit the courtesy, I extend my own appreciation for the herculean efforts that Ram put in, with backing from the attorney-general himself, to make the law school in Guyana progress from a vision to the edges of a visible entity.  Guyana owes Mr. Ram.  At least, prospective law students, domestic and abroad, should be aware of the pivotal role he played to make the regional law school possible in Guyana.

First, there was a committee.  It didn’t hold long, wasn’t up to the task, fell down on the job.  Then, there was a tag team of which the ubiquitous Chris Ram was one half.  It didn’t fare well, was soon consigned to the dustbin of history.  Inevitably, it came to that time: Ram & McRae selected, two illustrious Guyanese names, one lone Guyana Ranger.  An extraordinary fighter for a law school in Guyana.  An arduous, uphill, battle at the beginning and many points afterwards.  I’m sure that there were times when he felt like that fortuneless fellow from Greek mythology.  Remember Sisyphus; the man with the boulder that had to be pushed to the mountaintop, only when it reached near there, to tumble right down back on him.

The gods must have their fun.  It may be so, but there was still a job to be done.

My understanding is that the now embattled President of the CCJ, Justice Winston Anderson, was a source of strength during those dark, difficult, dismal times.  So, too, was Excellency Jacqueline Brown, who was astute and admirable in her backing for a regional law school, and for it to be in Guyana.  In life, too often the end product is seen, and the champion contributors given visibility and heralded.  Mr. Ram deserves every syllable of recognition and praise for his work.  So, also, the head of the CCJ and the indefatigable Ms. Brown.

It feels good to pen this public service circular.  Guyana is now the proud address of a regional school.  Ram is the recipient of encomia from a PPP Govt luminary.  Energy and excellence are hailed momentarily.  There’s no place for any enemy.  Manufactured or the result of a commitment to a certain quality of national duty.  May this warm moment be more than temporary.  It’s not that I trust in God more today (though I am just back from preaching in his house). 

It is that I believe that all could be well in Guyana, if only there is that honest effort to nurture what is best in ourselves, and then express it publicly.

I started with a bow to Anil Nandlall.  I close with a curtsy to him.  May there be more of this, when such is due.  May he use his high office, his good offices, to tame the beast that roams so unchecked in many a breast.  Then escape to wreak one carnage after another across this country.  I am hard pressed to see how anyone in Guyana could be so tight, so disturbed, as to think differently.  Thanks again to Messrs. Chris Ram and Anil Nandlall.