By Mark DaCosta- Senior opposition figures and watchdogs say the latest pledge by Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo to clamp down on gold smuggling is another unfulfilled vow that masks a deeper failure by the PPP administration to confront entrenched corruption. Past high-profile allegations — including the VICE News disclosures of July 2022 and the long-unresolved SU-gate and Adrianna Younge cases — offer a record of promises made, then quietly abandoned, leaving concerns about loss of revenue, opaque procurement practices, unconcern for citizens and political patronage unaddressed.
In recent days the leader of the opposition has again vowed a vigorous campaign against gold smuggling — a statement that has been greeted with scepticism by many Guyanese who point to a string of prior commitments that led nowhere. The charge sheet against the government, as assembled by critics, is familiar: explosive media revelations and parliamentary outcry, followed by rhetoric from the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) about investigations and reform, but without sustained or transparent action.
The VICE News broadcasts in July 2022 remain a touchstone, with recordings and testimony that prompted demands for inquiries into alleged bribery and irregular dealings involving senior figures. Yet, three years on, those calls for accountability have produced little in the way of definitive state action, say opposition politicians and civic activists.
Evidence that gold is being siphoned from our nation’s legitimate channels has accumulated in fragments across media reports, parliamentary questions and civil-society briefings. Independent journalists and lawmakers have cited specific episodes of undeclared consignments and suspicious cross-border movements tied to the gold trade, while airport and seaport inspections recorded seizures of unmanifested bullion on occasion.
Those incidents have prompted repeated warnings that the illicit outflow of gold is eroding public coffers and undermining efforts to regulate a sector that contributes substantially to the economy. Local commentators and trade analysts calculate that informal and illegal channels may be depriving the state of tens of millions in taxes and royalties, though precise figures remain contested and hard to verify without a full forensic audit.
Critics also point to a wider pattern of governance weaknesses that have made smuggling easier and accountability harder. Procurement practices, they argue, have increasingly favoured a narrow circle of contractors linked by family ties or political patronage, a problem highlighted in reports by oversight bodies and raised on the floor of the National Assembly.
Competing demands for openness and reform have, according to civil-society monitors, been met with intermittent rhetoric rather than systemic institutional change. Where independent audits and anticorruption recommendations have been proposed, implementation has been slow or partial, fuelling the perception that the machinery of state is being steered to protect allies rather than prosecute wrongdoing.
The sequence of promises and non-deliveries has fed a narrative that Jagdeo’s latest threat of a crackdown is timed more for political advantage than for genuine reform. Opposition MPs contend that such announcements frequently surface in the run-up to electoral cycles or in response to damaging revelations, serving to shift public attention rather than to produce prosecutions or policy overhaul.
The unresolved inquiries commonly cited by his critics include the so-called SU-gate matter and the investigation into the death of Adrianna Younge — both referenced by those who say the system has failed victims and voters by allowing politically sensitive probes to stall.
For many citizens alarmed at the scale of potential losses to the treasury and the corrosive effects of patronage, the solution is straightforward: independent, transparent investigations, strengthened oversight of bullion movements and a remodelled procurement framework that closes the gap between law and practice.
Whether the ruling party will initiate such measures against its own senior figures remains an open question. Until the state demonstrates consistent, impartial enforcement rather than episodic headline-seeking pronouncements, suspicion will linger that promises of a crackdown are no more than another chapter in a long pattern of hollow assurances, analysts say.
