The Commissioner Answers to the Court

592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

The Commissioner Answers to the Court

OPINION BY: Hem Kumar October 2026

This is a consequential ruling because it does more than settle a dispute between Christopher Ram and the Commissioner of Information. It begins to restore a legal mechanism that successive administrations allowed to lie dormant for fourteen years.

For fourteen years, Guyana’s Access to Information Act 2011 sat on the statute book like an unopened letter: enacted, available, and ignored by the very institutions meant to give it life. The promise was clear enough. Citizens would have a lawful avenue to seek records held by the State; public authorities would have duties to respond; and Parliament would receive annual reports showing whether the system was working.

In practice, however, the law became an ornament. The office established to advance access to information produced no visible culture of disclosure. Ministries remained accustomed to silence. Annual reports required by law were not laid before the National Assembly. Citizens seeking records encountered delay, deflection, or refusal.

This week, Justice Nicola Pierre opened that long-neglected statute, read its plain words, and delivered a judgment of importance to every Guyanese who has ever been told that public information is unavailable, inconvenient, confidential by habit, or simply not the business of the public.

Her findings are direct. The Commissioner of Information is a “public authority” within the meaning of section 2 of the Act. He is therefore subject to the same statutory obligations of openness and accountability that the law imposes on other bodies holding public records.

That point should never have required litigation. Yet it did.

The Commissioner had sought to send applicant Christopher Ram back to the ministries or agencies believed to hold the documents, effectively arguing that Mr. Ram first needed a refusal from the original record-holder before he could approach the Commissioner. Justice Pierre rejected that position. The Act contains no such precondition. A citizen does not have to run a bureaucratic obstacle course before invoking the law.

The ruling matters because bureaucracies often make rights inaccessible not by repealing them, but by adding hurdles that Parliament never enacted. They require the wrong form, the wrong office, the wrong sequence, or an unofficial preliminary refusal. Every such invented condition turns a legal right into a favour granted at administrative discretion.

Justice Pierre has now made clear that the Commissioner cannot manufacture a barrier that the law does not contain.

The Reporting Duty Ignored

The judgment also addresses an issue that goes to the heart of whether the Access to Information Act has been functioning at all. Section 44 requires an annual report to be prepared on the operation of the Act and laid before the National Assembly. That report is not optional. It is not a public-relations exercise. It is the accountability mechanism Parliament built into the legislation.

Through such reports, Parliament and the public should have been able to see how many information requests were made, which agencies complied, where delays occurred, what exemptions were invoked, what appeals or complaints arose, and whether the system was expanding or failing.

Instead, not one such report has reached the National Assembly.

Mr. Ram’s request for these reports was dismissed by the Commissioner as an “absurdity” and an invitation to “self-oversee.” But the court correctly recognized the request for what it was: a request for existing records relating to the administration of a statute. The Commissioner was not asked to invent a document. He was asked to account for documents the law already required.

That distinction is fundamental. A public officer cannot evade a disclosure request by disparaging the purpose of the request or by treating a statutory obligation as though it were an unreasonable personal demand.

If no reports exist, that fact itself demands explanation. If reports were prepared but not tabled, the public is entitled to know who withheld them, why they were withheld, and whether the Minister responsible took any step to ensure compliance.

A Troubling Finding on Candour

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of Justice Pierre’s ruling is her finding concerning the Commissioner’s candour about whether he had received the requests.

The judge described the situation as “particularly ironic and lamentable” in proceedings concerned with access to information. That language deserves close attention. Courts do not lightly comment on the candour of a public official. When they do, it reflects a serious concern about the reliability of the explanation offered.

The irony is stark. The official entrusted with facilitating access to public records was unable, or unwilling, to give a clear and straightforward account to the court about requests made to his own office.

Access to information depends on more than legislation. It depends on public officers keeping records, acknowledging correspondence, providing reasons, meeting deadlines, and acting honestly when challenged. An information regime cannot function where silence is routine and accountability must be extracted through litigation.

The Commissioner’s office ought to set the standard for administrative transparency. Instead, it has now become the subject of a court order compelling it to do what the law required all along.

What the Court Ordered

It is important to state exactly what the ruling does and does not accomplish.

Justice Pierre did not order immediate disclosure of every record sought. The court ordered the Commissioner to process and determine Mr. Ram’s three requests within sixty days. One of those requests concerns the taxes the Government pays on behalf of ExxonMobil and its partners—a matter of substantial public interest in a country whose oil revenues, fiscal arrangements, and petroleum concessions affect every household and future generation.

The Commissioner must now make a lawful decision. If he grants access, the documents should be disclosed in accordance with the Act. If he refuses access, or says that the records cannot be located after a thorough and diligent search, section 23 requires him to provide written reasons and to notify the applicant of the right to return to the High Court.

That is the next test.

A decision cannot be a vague letter, an oral explanation, or another exercise in administrative avoidance. It must identify the legal basis for any refusal. It must explain whether records exist, where they were searched for, what exemption is being relied upon, and why that exemption applies. The public is entitled to reasons, not reflexes.

The sixty-day period is therefore not a courtesy. It is a judicially reinforced deadline. The Commissioner must now demonstrate whether his office can perform the basic functions for which it has been publicly funded.

Government Must Explain Its Silence

The failure of the Access to Information Act is not the Commissioner’s failure alone. It is a Government failure.

Year after year, public funds have been allocated to an office connected to the administration of access-to-information law. Yet year after year, the mandatory annual reports were not laid before Parliament. This year’s budget again voted funds, but the public has heard no adequate explanation for why the central reporting requirement in section 44 went unmet for more than a decade.

That silence cannot continue.

A Minister answerable to the National Assembly for this statutory scheme must explain why Parliament was denied the reports the law required. Was the Commissioner instructed to prepare them? Were they prepared? Were they submitted to the responsible Minister? Were they rejected, delayed, misplaced, or ignored? What money was allocated, how was it spent, what staff and systems were in place, and what measurable work did the office perform?

These are not partisan questions. They are elementary questions of public administration.

Guyana cannot claim to embrace transparency while allowing a transparency law to remain dormant for fourteen years. Nor can it celebrate oil wealth and national development while citizens are forced into court merely to establish that the official responsible for information is himself subject to the Act.

A Precedent for Every Citizen

Christopher Ram deserves credit for taking the matter beyond protest and into the courtroom. Where public complaint had failed to awaken the system, litigation has now produced a binding judicial clarification.

He has secured more than a personal victory. He has established a working precedent for every Guyanese journalist, researcher, community group, taxpayer, trade unionist, student, civil-society organization, and ordinary citizen seeking to know how public power is exercised and how public money is spent.

The Commissioner is reachable. He is bound by the Act. He is answerable to the court.

That principle may seem obvious, but in Guyana it has had to be fought for. It is a first step toward converting access to information from a slogan into an enforceable civic right.

The importance of this moment lies not only in the records Mr. Ram seeks. It lies in what can follow: questions about contracts, tax concessions, environmental approvals, procurement awards, state lands, public spending, policy decisions, audits, regulatory enforcement, and the management of the country’s natural wealth.

A functioning access-to-information system changes the balance of power. It reduces the ability of officials to govern through secrecy. It equips citizens and journalists to test official claims against records. It gives Parliament, the courts, and the public a stronger basis on which to demand accountability.

The Demands Are the Law

The demands now before the Commissioner and the Government are neither radical nor unreasonable. They are obligations already written into Guyana’s law:

⇒ Determinations on all three of Mr. Ram’s requests within sixty days, with written reasons for every refusal or claim that records cannot be found.

⇒ The preparation and laying before the National Assembly of the overdue section 44 annual reports.

⇒ A full public account from the responsible Minister explaining why those reports were never tabled.

⇒ Clear disclosure of the resources allocated to the Commissioner’s office, the work performed, and the measures now being taken to ensure compliance with the Act.

⇒ A public, accessible process through which citizens can make requests, receive acknowledgements, track deadlines, and challenge refusals.

The court has opened the door. The Commissioner must now walk through it, and the Government must stop pretending that an enacted law can be ignored without consequence.

This judgment will mean little if it is read once, applauded briefly, and shelved beside the Act itself. The real measure of its significance will be found in the next sixty days: in the quality of the Commissioner’s decisions, in the candour of the Government’s explanations, and in whether Parliament finally receives the reports it was legally entitled to receive years ago.

For the first time in a long time, Guyanese have gained real ground in the struggle to obtain information from those who govern in their name. That ground must now be defended, widened, and used. The clock is running. We will publish the count.

— The Board