THE MV Barima disaster is one of the darkest chapters in Guyana’s recent history. The July 18 tragedy left dozens dead and others missing, presumed dead, in what has been described as the country’s worst-ever maritime disaster.
In moments like these, a nation looks to its political class for unity, clarity, and shared resolve. Instead, what Guyanese have witnessed from the Joint Opposition is a masterclass in political opportunism dressed up as accountability.
Consider the record. As search and rescue operations were still underway, claims circulated suggesting that boats deployed by Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed were somehow outpacing the government’s official response; a narrative Prime Minister Mark Phillips rightly condemned as an exploitation of a tragedy for political attention and social media engagement.
This was not accountability. This was theatre, staged while families were still waiting for news of their loved ones.
The pattern continued into Parliament. When the government pressed ahead with its legislative agenda, opposition MPs disrupted the sitting, and Opposition Leader Mohamed refused even the Speaker’s offer to address the House, instead joining his colleagues in the pit of the chamber.
Opposition parliamentarians stood chanting and pounding their desks over the tragedy while $54.89 billion in supplementary expenditure, funding that touches every sector of national life, was being considered, and they declined to ask a single oral question on this and the MV Barima matter.
That is not scrutiny. That is spectacle. If the Opposition genuinely wanted answers, the floor was theirs. They chose noise instead.
Then came the calls for resignations. The Opposition demanded that Public Works Minister Juan Edghill and Deodat Indar step aside, even though neither man has been found responsible for the disaster, and the Commission of Inquiry, the very body meant to establish facts, had not yet done its work.
This is the politicisation of grief: Demanding punishment before truth, verdicts before evidence. It tells Guyanese that the Opposition is less interested in what happened on that vessel than in who they can remove from office because of it.
Guyana has civil, constitutional, and parliamentary avenues for raising concerns, question time, motions, committees, direct engagement with ministries, the Commission of Inquiry itself. These channels exist precisely so that concerns can be heard and addressed without disorder.
To bypass them in favour of street protest is not principled dissent; it is a deliberate choice to manufacture confrontation rather than pursue resolution.
This is, frankly, diabolical. To tell grieving families that the government cannot be trusted to investigate the tragedy, that Parliament is a dead end, that only the street will deliver justice, this is to strip citizens of faith in the very institutions built to serve them. It manufactures despair where patience and process are needed, and it does so for electoral advantage.
The government, meanwhile, has kept its focus on the work which entails recovery operations, support for affected families, and a Commission of Inquiry meant to establish facts and prevent recurrence.