OPINION: MV Barima: facts, frank positions

Last Updated on Friday, 23 October 2026, 22:41 by Writer

by GHK Lall

I applaud civil society groups for their calls re the MV Barima tragedy. I endorse sending ministers on leave, obtaining credible forensic salvage experts to get that loaded, ill-fated boat before the people. Now, there’s going beyond applauding and endorsing. There’s presenting facts, taking positions alongside them.

Fact One: The MV Barima crime has 79 official victims. But there are no perpetrators. No PPP Govt agents, other than three charged with murder. Why charge three with murder when the COI hears litanies of failures? From widespread neglects to recklessness that led to 79 official murders. A tragedy may be unforeseen; murder unplanned still happening. As spurred by a continuum of lapses, indifferences, dismissals that leads to a crime 79 times over. The MV Barima was a tragedy in motion, waiting on time. Also, a crime in operation before that boat left the dock one last time. Before that billion-dollar wharf was delayed due to utter irresponsibility and incompetence. What’s another billion wasted? What’s all the noise about 79 lives lost? Check whose.

Fact Two: Long, loud calls surfaced. Ministers must go. Some place far from their roles. My position is unchanging: ownership starts there. It doesn’t end there. There’s a Cabinet: ministers and leaders. Did anyone rage at the delay of the Port Kaituma wharf? Accepted the rationales for not putting the new MV Ma Lisha to work? Or denounced the MV Barima being still in operation? Demanded its removal from service? There was that tender board bill, indicating a crippled octogenarian vessel crying for euthanasia. I may agree that Cabinet could stay, if the MV Barima was a cargo boat, and only that lost. But the Cabinet should not stay when 79 lives are lost. Nor should any above or outside the Cabinet.

Fact Three: Consider this fellow Guyanese. PPP Govt members argued in parliament of unknowns and quantifiable and how to measure those in the matter of oil spill protection for Guyanese. Exxon was their client. They pulled out all the stops. They put out their best in parliament for the rich white oil man to defeat a bill, that would have comforted Guyanese rich and poor. How much did they argue in cabinet, how much did they rail and stand, against what eventually could destroy families and communities? Poor indigenous, African, and Indian Guyanese. Given their energies and aptitudes for the white man, it must be depraved indifference and extraordinary negligence when Guyana’s indigenous, Africans, and Indians have no PPP champions such as Exxon had. Hence, it is not just two ministers who should go. But those who circled wagons around them. Those who concluded that the MV Barima tragedy — a crime waiting to happen — was nothing but collateral damage, the price of progress, the blood sacrifice for retaining power. And another who likes the role of supreme arbiter.

Fact Four: In 30 years of PPP rule, less than a literal handful of ministers, commissars, and PPP insiders have been fired, sent on leave, or resigned. PPP Govts are either the most competent and most incorruptible since creation. Or they are the best at covering up and looking out for one another. A pack that goes on the attack to stay intact.

Fact Five: In the first hours after the MV Barima died, the PPP Govt’s first concerns were to shut out the media and shovel out propaganda. Noise and minimize. I write, repeat. Thus, the farces, fakeries, and patented frauds on Guyanese began. Was the PPP Govt’s priority to rescue Barima survivors? Or was it to conceal? Camouflaging hasn’t worked, had to fail. Because the holes in the govt’s narratives are so large and so many. First responders and search-and-rescue personnel ill-equipped, or ignorant, or insidious. Then, a dressed-up wharf and what I term a cross-dressing COI. It talks in tongues. Walks in circles. Plays the game. Guyanese will get the PPP Govt’s definition of what’s a full, thorough, and independent COI. Another tragedy cum crime. I’m on record, calling it as it is.

Fact Six: There’s the salvage award. It must be for acting or putting on a show. For posterity, bases covered. There was a tender award. There was a COI. In Guyana, crimes spawn more crimes. If the objective is to raise the Barima intact and timely, restarting with that tender award.

Summation: I back civil society groups’ calls: go further. The PPP Government is culpable, liable, accountable.