Guyana: Stop Sleepwalking Through Failure

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.