The End Does Not Justify the Means

592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

OPINION BY: Hem Kumar October 2026

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

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

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

That is not how accountable government works.

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

THE LABEL IS NOT THE LICENSE

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

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

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

DEVELOPMENT DOES NOT MEAN FEWER QUESTIONS

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

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

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

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

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

◊When the State overpays, taxpayers pay.

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

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

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

THE FALSE CHOICE

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

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

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

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

HOW INSTITUTIONS DIE

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

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

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

— The Board