There has long been the saying that Guyana is not a real place. People have come to this conclusion because they say that the rule of law does not apply. They have concluded that the state can run rough shod over any and everyone whom it so chooses to.
During the examination of the estimates there was the query about the role of the Commissioner of Information. The budget allocates $40 million to him per year for the job of being able to provide information to queries from a questioning public.
However, during the decade that this office has been in existence the Commissioner has never provided any information. And there are many questions.
Just recently, the Permanent Secretary on the Foreign Ministry reported that the United States government is seeking the extradition of another Guyanese. Had the woman not made that announcement the nation would have been left to believe that Azruddin Mohamed and his father were the only people for whom extradition is being sought.
People have written to the Commissioner of Information seeking information on other issues but no one has ever got an answer. Still fresh in recent memory is the Commissioner responding to the query that the person seeking the request failed to address him properly.
People organized demonstrations. Christopher Ram, an economist and a lawyer, had cause to seek information from the Commissioner but he became frustrated when none was forthcoming. He filed Guyana’s first judicial review action under the Access to Information Act 2011
He challenged what he said was Commissioner of Information Charles R. Ramson’s “systematic refusal to enforce the nation’s transparency laws”.
Ram’s action alleges that Ramson has fundamentally failed in his statutory duty, creating what amounts to a constitutional crisis in government accountability. The case seeks to compel disclosure about a publicly funded investigation into Guyana’s 2016 petroleum Production Sharing Agreement – information, he said, that the government has withheld for over three years.
Ram said that the court documents detail a pattern of “institutional obstruction” spanning three years.
“In 2021, formal requests were deliberately ignored by the Commissioner. Follow-up attempts in 2023 met with bureaucratic stonewalling. More recently, public demonstrations were held outside the Commissioner’s residence as softer remedies were exhausted.
In 2025, Ramson wrote of “delusional concern,” in reference to the freedom of information. Nearly one year later nothing has changed.
During the examination of the budget estimates Minister Gail Teixeira could not explain why Ramson could ignore the statutory requirements. One of these is submitting annual reports on his activities. But the government continues to fund the operations of the Commissioner.
So the second indictment remains a secret. When Mohamed’s indictment was handed down the government spared no pains in making the details available. This second one is a secret. There are no reported moves to detain the individual.
Certainly there are no moves at prosecution on behalf of the United States government.
On Monday, the government moved with alacrity to have Azruddin Mohamed incarcerated because he was late for his court hearing.
Then came the bombshell announcement that the state had made efforts to keep him from attending court. Mohamed spoke of car tyres being slashed.
There are those who now say that Azruddin Mohamed is a case of being bitten by his own bedbug. In Guyana there is the phrase about you own bug biting you.
Another surprising bit of news involved the closure of Stabroek News. Back in 1986, with the help of the U.S.-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED) the newspaper emerged.
In 1986, the late Charles DeFlorimonte, fashioned it and travelled to Trinidad to have it printed each week. At the start it was a mere 6,000 copies per week. Pretty soon the newspaper took root. The late President Desmond Hoyte had introduced the Economic Recovery Programme that paved the way for the private sector to be involved in national development.
A printing press was acquired as were staff and the newspaper became one of the leading voices in Guyana. The last of the private newspapers in independent Guyana, the Guyana Graphic, had been acquired by the government and merged with the Chronicle to become the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.
The Guyana Chronicle has all but died. The advent of Kaieteur News consolidated the private media. News that the government wanted to conceal became public knowledge.
For nearly four decades Stabroek News was a household fare. Now it is going to the wall as is the case of newspapers all over the world. Social media has made an impact.
The demise of this newspaper would hurt many. The vendors, all of whom made a living from the newspapers, would lose income. Pressmen would be out of a job as would the other skilled people behind the publication of newspapers.
Unless the paper maintains an online presence, press conferences hosted by the government would be hopeless affairs when it comes to public information.
Meanwhile, the courts are still to hand down the ruling in the matter brought by Dr Terrence Campbell. Dr Campbell moved to the courts seeking information on the expenditure from the Natural Resource Fund.
The ruling has been delayed. It should have been handed down in October, then in December, then in January.
It is the same with the ruling on the IDPADA-G matter brought by Vincent Alexander. That ruling has been delayed for some two years.
The view is that whenever a ruling goes against the government the courts are slow to hand it down.
