Why the MV Barima COI Must Be Reconstituted
One week. Seventy-three bodies recovered. Thirty souls still unaccounted for in the waters off the Pomeroon River. And on Sunday, President Irfaan Ali stood before a camera and announced the Commission of Inquiry that will determine what happened to the MV Barima: a commission he selected himself, announced without consulting the parliamentary opposition, and structured in a way that gives this government maximum control over an investigation into its own failures.
This is not justice. This is the management of public outrage dressed up as accountability.
Guyana1News believes the five-member COI as currently constituted must be reconstituted. Not because the individuals named are necessarily unqualified, but because the process by which they were chosen, the absence of opposition input, and a glaring conflict of interest at the very top of the panel make it impossible for this commission to carry the public confidence it needs to produce findings that Guyanese will trust. The families of the dead deserve better. The nation deserves better. And by any international standard, they are entitled to better.
THE CONFLICT OF INTEREST NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT
Let us begin with the most uncomfortable fact in President Ali’s announcement: one that has received almost no attention in the days since.
Justice Godfrey Phillip Smith of Belize has been named to chair this Commission of Inquiry. He is described as a distinguished jurist with Caribbean Court of Appeal credentials and CARICOM standing. All of that may be true. But there is one detail the presidential statement mentioned in passing that should stop every Guyanese in their tracks: Justice Smith previously served as a member of the COI team that investigated the 2nd March 2020 general elections in Guyana.
That was the same election whose legitimacy was disputed by the very opposition parties now calling for transparency. That was the election that returned the PPP/C to power under President Ali. That COI team, on which Justice Smith served, produced findings that supported the Ali administration’s position on the election.
Let that sit for a moment.
The government now under scrutiny for the deaths of 73 Guyanese on an 87-year-old vessel it chose to keep in service has selected, as the chairman of the investigation into its own conduct, a jurist who previously served in a role that validated that same government’s hold on power.
Justice must not only be done. It must be seen to be done. And a chairman with a documented prior professional engagement that benefited the appointing government cannot credibly claim that appearance, regardless of how capable or honourable he personally may be.
This is not a personal attack on Justice Smith. His integrity as an individual is not the point. The point is that justice, real justice, the kind that grieving families and a traumatised nation can trust, must not only be done but seen to be done. A chairman with a documented prior professional engagement that benefited the appointing government cannot credibly claim that appearance, regardless of how capable or honourable he personally may be.
This alone is sufficient grounds to reconstitute the commission.
APPOINTING YOUR OWN INVESTIGATORS IS NOT ACCOUNTABILITY
The Leader of the Opposition, Azruddin Mohamed, expressed disappointment that the COI was announced without consultation. APNU went further, calling the exclusion of parliamentary opposition from the selection process a move that “undermines confidence from the outset and creates the unfortunate perception that this exercise is designed to manage public outrage rather than establish the full truth.”
They are right.
Consider what this Commission of Inquiry is actually being asked to investigate. It will examine:
- Whether the Maritime Administration Department, a government agency, adequately regulated the MV Barima.
- Whether the Transport and Harbours Department, a government agency, properly maintained and operated the vessel.
- Whether the licensing authority, a government body, appropriately certified a 1939-built hull to carry 284 tonnes of modern cargo through open coastal waters in 2026.
Every agency under the microscope is an arm of the Ali administration. Every regulatory failure that may be uncovered is a failure of a system that this government has overseen. And the people appointed to examine all of that were chosen exclusively by President Ali himself.
This is structurally incompatible with independent inquiry. It is the equivalent of asking a defendant to select the jury.
APNU Member of Parliament Dr. Terrence Campbell called this the biggest disaster in Guyana’s history from a single event, a characterisation that is difficult to dispute. He argued correctly that the National Assembly should have a say in the composition and scope of any inquiry. Parliament represents the breadth of the Guyanese people. The executive represents one party. In a matter of this national magnitude, the two are not interchangeable.
WHAT HAS BEEN HIDDEN BEFORE
Opposition Leader Mohamed raised a concern that deserves more weight than it has received: that reports from previous Commissions of Inquiry in Guyana have been hidden from the public.
This is not paranoia. It is history.
Guyanese have seen commission reports sit on shelves, sanitised before release, published long after public attention has moved on, or simply never released at all. The mechanism of a Commission of Inquiry in Guyana has too often functioned as a political pressure valve: something appointed to reduce public anger in the immediate aftermath of a crisis, with findings calibrated to protect rather than expose, and published, if ever, in a form that serves the appointing authority.
The 73 people who did not come home from the Barima on July 18 did not die so their deaths could become the subject of a managed report released eighteen months from now. Their families are waiting. The nation is watching. And based on Guyana’s history with these instruments, watching is entirely warranted.
THE INTERNATIONAL STANDARD: WHAT A CREDIBLE MARITIME COI LOOKS LIKE
Guyana is a member of the International Maritime Organization. That membership is not ceremonial. It carries obligations, including the obligation to conduct marine casualty investigations that meet international standards.
The IMO’s Casualty Investigation Code, formally the Code of the International Standards and Recommended Practices for a Safety Investigation into a Marine Casualty or Marine Incident, sets out clear principles for how investigations of this kind should be conducted. Those principles include independence, transparency, and the primacy of safety outcomes over blame assignment or liability protection.
The code is clear that a maritime safety investigation should be conducted “separately from and independent of any other investigation carried out to apportion blame or determine liability.” It is equally clear that findings should be released publicly.
Based on those standards, and guided by how comparable maritime disasters have been investigated in other jurisdictions, here is what the reconstituted MV Barima COI should look like:
1. The chair must have no prior professional engagement with the appointing government.
This is non-negotiable under any credible conflict-of-interest framework. The chair should be a retired judge or senior jurist from a Caribbean jurisdiction whose government has no political relationship with the Ali administration, drawn if necessary from outside CARICOM entirely.
2. The composition must include opposition nominees.
In a matter of this national significance, the parliamentary opposition, which represents hundreds of thousands of Guyanese, must have the right to nominate at least one member of the panel. Not a veto, but a voice. This is how major public inquiries are structured in mature democracies, from the United Kingdom’s public inquiry framework to Canada’s independent commission process.
3. The IMO should be formally requested to appoint an independent technical observer.
As an IMO member state, Guyana can and should request that the organisation appoint a representative to observe the investigation and verify that its conduct meets international casualty investigation standards. This is not an admission of incapacity. It is a demonstration of good faith.
4. Technical experts must be verifiably independent of the Guyanese government.
Dr. Andrzej Jasionowski of Poland and Captain Hamada Fouda of Jamaica bring genuine maritime expertise. But their terms of engagement must make explicit that they report only to the commission, not to the government, and that their technical findings cannot be edited, withheld, or modified before publication.
5. All proceedings must be livestreamed.
Mohamed’s call for this is correct and should be adopted without reservation. In an age where Guyana has a vibrant diaspora watching from New York, Toronto, and London, there is no legitimate reason to conduct these hearings behind closed doors.
6. The final report must be released in full, without redaction, within a defined deadline.
Six months is a reasonable outer limit for a commission of this scope. The report must be tabled in the National Assembly, not delivered to the President’s office, so that Parliament can debate its findings and mandate the reforms it recommends.
WHY THE GOVERNMENT CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO CONTROL THIS
There is one argument the Ali administration and its supporters will make against everything written here, and it should be addressed directly: that the government has a legitimate right and constitutional authority to establish commissions of inquiry, and that opposition parties are simply politicising a tragedy.
That argument is technically correct on the first point and entirely wrong on the second.
Yes, the executive has the authority to establish COIs. But authority is not the same as legitimacy. And legitimacy in this case requires that the government do something that is genuinely difficult for any administration to do: voluntarily limit its own control over an investigation into its own conduct.
The reason this matters so much here is precisely because the MV Barima is not a politically neutral event. This disaster reflects directly on years of government decisions: the decision to continue operating an 87-year-old vessel on a demanding coastal route; the regulatory framework, or absence of it, that allowed 268 tonnes of cargo, vehicles, and 179 people onto a vessel with a documented load line problem; and the management structure of the Transport and Harbours Department that permitted manifest discrepancies to go undetected.
These are not opposition talking points. These are facts established by the government’s own statements in the week since the tragedy:
- The MARAD Director General admitted he did not know how cargo was distributed on the vessel.
- The Public Works Minister initially cited 133 passengers before footage revealed 179 people were actually aboard.
- The captain and first engineer tested positive for narcotics after the disaster.
Every one of these failures happened on this government’s watch. Every agency responsible answers to this government. And this government has appointed the investigators.
That is not a technicality. That is the entire problem.
A FINAL WORD TO THE FAMILIES
To the families of the 73 dead and the 30 still missing: you are not asking for anything extraordinary. You are asking for what every family in your position deserves: an investigation that nobody controls, findings that nobody edits, and accountability that nobody escapes.
You deserved a vessel that was not 87 years old. You deserved a manifest that counted every person on board. You deserved regulators who knew where the cargo was stacked. You did not get any of those things on July 18.
Do not accept a commission that gives you less than the truth.
Source: Guyana1news
