OPINION: MV Barima COI -slow walk to a slow death

Last Updated on Wednesday, 12 August 2026, 3:17 by Denis Chabrol

by GHK Lall

Soon it will be four weeks since the horrendous MV Barima tragedy struck the consciousness.  Already, the PPP Govt’s tactic is obvious: slow walk this national tragedy into obscurity.  I watch the bereaved families, the wider Guyanese family, how they react.

There’s a Commission of Inquiry (COI).  Terms of Reference have been set.  The COI has a secretary.  A familiar face, a man familiar with how the national space operates.  Great!  Ready, set, go.  Not so fast!  Mr. Javed Shadick supplied the details.  ‘Preparatory stage.’  And ‘administrative arrangements.’  Specifically, from Secretary Shadick himself, “We are still doing the foundational work right now.”  In thanking Secretary Shadick, I take the liberty of adding a prayer: may the foundation prove firm, may the whole edifice hold intact.

A hundred Guyanese died; no one knows how many are missing.  Regardless of how many, this conclusion can be memorialized in steel: they are all dead.  The final total may be 125, 150, maybe more.  I’ll leave it right there.  By god, where is the sense of urgency in this COI?  Where’s respect for the dead beyond three days of mourning?  And the usual presidential sprinting at full throttle.  To hold hands.  To weep a gallon of, ah, well, I might as well settle for tears.  The PPP Govt’s strategy is as clear as day at midday.  Not one cloud in the sky to mar the pathos of another Guyana day.

Slow walk the COI to death.  Bad choice of words; the government left with no choice.  It’s almost mid-August.  With kindest regards for Secretary Shadick, he has been given a basket to bail the Atlantic Ocean.  Get this straight: I am not shedding one teardrop for him.  Let me use what he offered with a heart of gold.  “Foundational work” in motion.  Wonderful, I say after all these days.  By my estimation, the “foundational work” could be completed by the end of August.  By that time, the chair from Belize, and the other COI members would have bought their tickets and readying to travel to Guyana.  Is there winter in Belize?  Just checking to determine if there’s a blizzard in the forecast, which could slowdown the start of the COI business some more.  From a slow walk to a turtle’s trot to a snail’s pace.  It is PPP Guyana.  A man in a wheelchair with the wheels locked would have covered more ground than this COI to nowhere.

Now I have a favor to ask of Secretary Shadick.  President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.  On December 5, 1963, the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy held its first meeting at 10 a.m.  In less than two weeks, Chairman Earl Warren was moving.  It was a president who had half of his head blown off, I will readily agree.  Yet, in a time of unbelievable American agony and haunting numbness, there was still that will to move on, get things done.  Perhaps, Secretary Shadick could include this in the COI’s records.  Identify me as the first witness.  We didn’t lose a national leader, and I thank god for that benevolence.  We lost more than a president.  Guyana lost 100 dead.  A catastrophe that is a crime if ever there was one.

My fellow Guyanese, permit me to be chandelier clear.  This COI will be a flop.  It is already shaping up to be a farce.  One of those now patented PPP Govt productions that start out promising the world, only to terminate with Guyanese given a shovel to bury their hopes and their griefs.  Since when has anything good come out of PPP Govt lands?  Of course, farms are exempted from this sharing with citizens.  Secretary Shadick can record all of that and this, too: I will call situations as I see them.  This COI is going nowhere, other than to march it slow walk into the sunset.  By that time, Guyanese would have been overtaken by other events.  Interest dimmed.  Passions drained.  For the families who lost before, they must brace themselves for one more loss.