TWO VOICES, ONE COUNCIL

TWO VOICES, ONE COUNCIL

The Bar Council speaks fluently when the Judiciary is threatened. It has not yet found the same language for seventy-three dead Guyanese

OPINION —August 2026

THE OCCASION FOR THIS COMPARISON

On 10 August 2026, the Bar Council of the Bar Association of Guyana issued a statement addressing media reports of a leaked internal correspondence among Judges of the Caribbean Court of Justice. The statement is unambiguous in its concern. It describes the unauthorized disclosure of internal judicial correspondence as a matter capable of bringing the administration of justice “into disrepute.”

It calls the act, if proven, “a gross breach of confidence and a serious dereliction of duty.” It urges that the President of the CCJ be afforded “sufficient latitude” to lead the Court according to his vision, subject to the Code of Judicial Conduct. It is, by any reasonable reading, a forceful and considered institutional intervention.

The 592 Guardian does not dispute the legitimacy of that statement. Confidentiality of judicial deliberation is a serious matter, and a Bar Association has standing — indeed, an obligation — to speak to it. The question this editorial raises is not whether the Council was right to speak on the CCJ leak. It is why the same Council, addressing a catastrophe that killed at least seventy-three Guyanese citizens and left dozens more missing, found only sympathy to offer, and nothing more.

WHAT THE RECORD SHOWS

On 22 July 2026, four days after the MV Barima capsized en route from Georgetown to Port Kaituma, the Bar Council issued its “Statement of Solidarity and Support.” It is a document of condolence. It extends “deepest sympathies” to the families of the dead, describes the Council as “profoundly saddened,” wishes survivors “strength, healing, and a full recovery,” and closes by joining “the nation in mourning the lives that have been lost while praying for comfort, healing, and peace.”

That is the entirety of the Council’s public position on the deadliest maritime disaster in Guyana’s modern history. A review of the Bar Association’s own media centre, and of its public social media channels, confirms that as of this writing, no further statement has followed.

◊ Not on the international Commission of Inquiry chaired by Justice Godfrey Phillip Smith, sworn in on 30 July with a mandate to establish facts, determine accountability, and recommend reforms.

◊ Nothing on the conflict of interest involving one of its own member’s— a sitting minister  professional relationship with an appointed commissioner.

◊ Not on the Terms of Reference published in the Official Gazette, which direct the Commission to examine vessel maintenance, certification, loading practices, and the conduct of state agencies above the level of the crew.

◊ Not on the murder charges laid against Captain Kevin Price, Chief Mate Rondell Roberts, and Goods Superintendent Delon Granderson — each facing seventy-two counts — nor on the due process protections owed to them as the matter proceeds through the Charity Magistrate’s Court alongside an international inquiry operating in full public view.

This last silence is the most difficult to explain. A Bar Association’s core institutional purpose is the protection of legal rights and fair process, particularly for the accused, particularly under public pressure, particularly when the pressure is most intense.

Three Guyanese citizens face the heaviest charge in the criminal code, multiplied seventy-two times, under conditions of extraordinary public anger. If there was ever a moment for the Council to speak in its own primary register — due process, fair trial rights, the presumption of innocence — this was it. It did not.

THE CONTRAST, SIDE BY SIDE

The disparity is not simply that one statement is longer or more detailed than the other. It is that the two statements draw on entirely different vocabularies. The CCJ statement speaks the language of institutions, duty, and consequence. The Barima statement speaks the language of grief.

Both languages have their place. But when the body capable of the former chooses only the latter in the face of mass state-linked death, the choice itself becomes the story.

WHAT THIS IS NOT

This editorial does not allege that the Council’s silence was purchased, ordered, or coordinated with the Government of Guyana. We have no evidence of that, and we do not suggest it. Institutional caution is a real and sometimes legitimate instinct — a Bar Association may reasonably hesitate to comment publicly on matters that are, or may become, sub judice while criminal charges are being prosecuted. That caution deserves to be named as a possible explanation, not dismissed.

But caution explains restraint. It does not explain three weeks of total silence on the existence of a Commission of Inquiry, the fairness of an ongoing prosecution, or the state’s own regulatory failures — none of which required the Council to prejudge a single fact. A Bar Association can call for an independent and timely inquiry, for the preservation of evidence, for respect for due process, and for accountability wherever the facts lead, without pronouncing a single person guilty or innocent. Those are not political demands. They are the ordinary vocabulary of a functioning Bar Association. It is a vocabulary the Council used fluently for the CCJ. It has not yet used it for the Barima.

The question is not whether the Bar Council expressed condolences. It did. The question is whether its intervention matched the gravity of a catastrophe involving mass death, a state-operated transport system, and the due process rights of three citizens now facing seventy-two counts of murder apiece.

— The Editorial Board

A PATTERN WORTH NAMING

This is not the first institution this news room  has documented responding with force to threats against the machinery of governance while offering only ceremony in the face of harm to ordinary Guyanese. It is a pattern this newsroom has traced across the Model Village consultations, the Development Bank Bill’s passage without debate, and the Region 10 administrative impasse: energetic institutional voice where institutional privilege is at stake, and comparative quiet where public accountability is owed.

The Bar Council’s conduct across these two statements fits that pattern precisely — not proof of coordination, but further evidence of a civic culture in which the instruments meant to hold power accountable reserve their sharpest words for their own house.

WHAT THE COUNCIL SHOULD DO

The remedy is straightforward, and it costs the Council nothing it has not already spent on the CCJ matter. The Bar Council should issue a further statement addressing the MV Barima tragedy on its merits as a matter of public law: affirming the necessity of an independent and transparent Commission of Inquiry, insisting on the preservation and disclosure of all relevant maintenance, inspection, cargo, and communication records, and affirming the due process rights of every person charged in connection with the disaster, including the presumption of innocence pending trial.

None of this requires the Council to take a side. It requires only that the Council speak in the register it has already shown it possesses.

Guyana does not lack institutions capable of forceful language. It lacks the consistent will to direct that language toward the country’s actual emergencies rather than its institutional grievances.

The Bar Council has, this month, demonstrated that it knows how to speak with teeth. Seventy-two families are still waiting to hear it use them.

Sources: Bar Council of the Bar Association of Guyana, “Statement by the Bar Council of the Bar Association of Guyana on Media Reports Concerning the Leak of Internal Correspondence Among the Judges of the Caribbean Court of Justice” (Aug. 2026); Bar Council of the Bar Association of Guyana, “Statement of Solidarity and Support by the Bar Council of the Bar Association of Guyana Following the MV Barima Tragedy” (22 July 2026); Guyana Chronicle, “MV Barima CoI Empowered to Probe Safety Failures, Recommend Prosecutions, Maritime Reforms — ToRs Outline” (4 Aug. 2026); Guyana Chronicle, “Boat Captain, Two Others Remanded on Murder Charges Over MV Barima Tragedy” (29 July 2026); Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation, “Guyana to Launch International Inquiry into MV Barima Tragedy.”