Guyana Needs Merit, Not Political Favor

Guyana Needs Merit, Not Political Favor

OPINION BY :Hem Kumar– September 2026

This U.S. settlement offers a sharp lens through which to examine a major gap in Guyana’s public administration: the absence of credible, enforceable safeguards against political, racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination in employment—particularly where the State is the employer, purchaser, regulator, and distributor of opportunity.

Accenture Federal Services, a major government contractor, has agreed to pay the United States  $25  million to resolve allegations that it falsely certified compliance with federal equal-opportunity requirements while using race and sex as factors in hiring, promotion, training, and leadership-development decisions.

The allegations are especially important because they go beyond crude or open discrimination. The U.S. government alleged that the company used internal demographic targets, color-coded workforce reports, race-conscious hiring exercises, separate promotion pipelines, and training opportunities restricted by race or sex. The Justice Department’s central position was straightforward: a company cannot receive taxpayer-funded contracts, certify that employment decisions will be made without regard to race or sex, and then make those characteristics part of the employment decision.

Whether one agrees with every aspect of the U.S. government’s policy direction is not the main lesson for Guyana. The larger lesson is that a serious State must have laws, oversight institutions, contract rules, and remedies capable of detecting and punishing employment discrimination. Guyana does not.

The Guyanese Reality

In Guyana, meritocracy is too often a slogan rather than a governing standard. Employment, promotion, dismissal, contract awards, boards, commissions, scholarships, training opportunities, and access to State-connected opportunities can be clouded by political affiliation, ethnicity, family ties, personal loyalty, and proximity to those in power.

Too many Guyanese believe—often with good reason—that competence is not enough. A person’s prospects may depend on who recommended them, which party they are perceived to support, whether they are considered politically reliable, or whether their identity makes them convenient or inconvenient to the administration of the day.

The consequences are not abstract. Workers can be sidelined, denied advancement, stripped of substantive responsibilities, transferred punitively, excluded from training, or removed from positions without transparent and fair processes. Applicants can be overlooked without receiving any explanation. Qualified citizens can watch jobs go to persons with weaker credentials but stronger political connections.

State culpability and the REO purge

The Guyanese crisis is more serious than the absence of strong anti-discrimination legislation. The State itself appears capable of becoming the principal vehicle through which cronyism, nepotism, political preference, and punitive exclusion are practised.

The sudden removal of all ten Regional Executive Officers, followed by the immediate naming of replacements, raises grave questions about whether the public service is being administered according to law, merit, transparency, and due process—or according to the political preferences of the ruling PPP-C administration.

These were not minor clerical posts. Regional Executive Officers sit at the heart of regional government. They oversee administration, spending, implementation of public projects, personnel, services, and the machinery through which citizens access the State. Such offices should never be treated as political rewards, party property, or positions to be distributed at the pleasure of any President. These are Public Service appointments that are bound by a prescribed process of appointment 

If the former REOs were removed for misconduct, incapacity, poor performance, financial irregularity, or breach of duty, then the evidence, assessments, notices, and procedures should be placed before the public. If they were not removed for those reasons, then Guyanese are entitled to know why ten senior officials were displaced simultaneously and why the replacements were apparently selected without an open, competitive, and independently verifiable process.

The central question is unavoidable: Were these appointments made through public-service rules and merit-based selection, or were they cherry-picked through executive and political discretion?

A genuine merit process would require advertised vacancies, published eligibility criteria, applications, independent assessment, documented interviews, scoring, a shortlist, conflict-of-interest safeguards, and an appointment process insulated from partisan influence. The country should be able to see why each successful candidate was more qualified than every other Guyanese who might reasonably have applied.

Where none of that is visible, the perception of political patronage becomes unavoidable.

In a small society, where government remains the dominant employer and where state-linked contracts carry enormous economic value, discrimination and patronage have an even more corrosive effect. They do not merely harm an individual worker. They can determine which families advance, which communities remain excluded, and who gains access to the country’s oil-era wealth.

Oil Wealth Requires Higher Standards

Guyana is no longer a country that can excuse weak institutions as the unavoidable condition of poverty. The country now has access to unprecedented petroleum revenues. It is building roads, hospitals, schools, energy projects, housing schemes, public agencies, and major procurement programmes.

Every one of those programs will require employees, contractors, consultants, engineers, administrators, suppliers, and managers. The question is whether those opportunities will be allocated through transparent competition and demonstrated competence—or whether they will become another machinery for entrenching political patronage.

That requires more than speeches about inclusion. It requires rules that can be enforced against those with political power.

What Guyana Should Do

Guyana needs a modern employment-equality and public-integrity framework that expressly prohibits discrimination in hiring, promotion, training, transfer, disciplinary action, dismissal, public appointments, and access to government-funded opportunities.

Such reform should include:

⇒ A clear statutory prohibition against discrimination based on race, ethnicity, sex, religion, political opinion, disability, age, social origin, and other protected characteristics.

⇒ Explicit protection against political discrimination and retaliation in public employment and State-owned or State-controlled entities.

⇒ Mandatory merit-based recruitment procedures for public-sector jobs, including published criteria, scored interviews, documented selection decisions, and independent review.

⇒ A legal requirement that public contracts include enforceable equal-opportunity and non-discrimination clauses.

⇒ Contractor certifications confirming that hiring, promotion, and workplace opportunities are administered without discrimination or political retaliation.

⇒ Strong whistleblower protections for employees who report discriminatory practices, political interference, falsified recruitment records, or retaliatory dismissals.

⇒ An independent employment-equity or public-service commission with investigative authority, access to records, power to compel evidence, and authority to recommend remedies.

⇒ Public reporting on recruitment, promotions, dismissals, acting appointments, contract awards, and training opportunities across ministries, agencies, State boards, and State-owned enterprises.

⇒ Meaningful consequences, including reinstatement, compensation, disqualification from public contracts, recovery of funds, and sanctions against officials who abuse public office.

No More “Discretion” Without Accountability

The most dangerous word in Guyanese public administration may be “discretion.” In principle, officials need discretion to manage institutions. In practice, unchecked discretion can become a cover for discrimination, cronyism, victimization, and the quiet removal of persons deemed politically undesirable.

The Accenture settlement demonstrates an important principle: discrimination involving public funds is not merely an internal human-resources issue. It can amount to fraud against taxpayers when an organization certifies compliance with equal-opportunity requirements but acts differently behind closed doors.

Guyana should adopt that principle. Any company, agency, board, contractor, or public official that receives public funds while manipulating jobs and opportunities according to race, sex, political affiliation, or personal connection should face real scrutiny and real consequences.

The country cannot build a modern oil economy on an old foundation of patronage. Guyana’s wealth belongs to all Guyanese. So must its opportunities.

–The Board