Many editorials and public commentaries have appeared since the MV Barima tragedy expressing growing unease over the Government’s handling of both the disaster and its aftermath. Questions have surrounded the search-and-rescue response, the seaworthiness of the vessel, the accuracy of information initially provided to the public, the pace of salvage and, increasingly, the mechanisms through which responsibility will ultimately be determined. Meanwhile, one area in which the State moved with remarkable speed was against three employees of the Transport and Harbours Department: Captain Kevin Price, Chief Mate Rondell Roberts and Goods Superintendent Delon Granderson. They were charged with murder ten days after the sinking. The Director of Public Prosecutions has emphasised that those charges followed consideration of the police investigation and relevant law and that the criminal prosecution can proceed independently of the Commission of Inquiry.
That distinction is important. The guilt or innocence of those three men is now a matter for the courts. But their prosecution cannot become a substitute for examining the institutional chain above them.
The MV Barima was not a privately owned vessel operating beyond the reach of the State. It was State-owned and operated through the Transport and Harbours Department. The questions therefore extend considerably beyond what occurred on its bridge on the night of July 18. Who certified an 87-year-old vessel as seaworthy? What inspections preceded its final voyage? What was known about its engines and other mechanical systems? What passenger and cargo controls were required, and were they enforced? What emergency equipment was aboard? What search-and-rescue arrangements existed for a State ferry travelling that route? Which agencies possessed responsibility at each stage, and what information travelled upwards through the administrative and political chain? These are institutional questions rather than merely operational ones.
And then there is the President himself.
At his September 14 press conference, President Ali was asked about the salvage of the MV Barima. His answer was extraordinary given what the subject represented. Nearly two months after what he himself had described in the most solemn national terms, the President acknowledged that he had not been “comprehensively” briefed on the salvage bids. He nevertheless promised that very night to engage the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board and have information on the status of the bidding process supplied to the press. The problem here is that while a President is not expected to personally supervise every procurement file, he should not have a problem identifying what is priority.
The MV Barima may contain some of the most important physical evidence available to investigators. Its recovery has implications for the Commission of Inquiry, for the families seeking answers and potentially for the criminal proceedings already instituted. If, almost two months after the country’s worst maritime disaster, the President responsible for repeatedly assuring the nation of Government’s commitment to transparency and accountability had still not been comprehensively briefed on where the salvage procurement stood, Guyanese are entitled to ask – where is the urgency?
The President has repeatedly invoked transparency, accountability and the determination to discover what went wrong. His Government established an international Commission of Inquiry with a mandate broad enough, on paper, to investigate systemic failure. If responsibility rests with the captain and crew, evidence should establish it. If it rests with officers within Transport and Harbours, the evidence should travel there. If MARAD failed in some regulatory responsibility, the inquiry should say so. If search-and-rescue systems failed, those failures should be identified. And if decisions, omissions or warnings travel farther upward—into ministries or ultimately into the political administration—the investigation must be equally willing to follow them there. That is the test.
But perhaps the most consequential development came this week. Kiskadee Watch reported that a family affected by the MV Barima tragedy had been approached concerning a proposed settlement which, according to that family’s account, included terms that would absolve the Government of responsibility. The statement by this family deserves considerably more scrutiny than another announcement about how many millions of dollars Government has distributed. It would mean that while the Commission of Inquiry established by President Ali has yet to publicly determine where institutional responsibility lies, the Government is already attempting, in at least one case, to negotiate an agreement addressing its own responsibility.
The sequence is troubling. Attorney General Anil Nandlall had previously gone out of his way to distinguish Government’s financial assistance from compensation, stressing that the assistance should not constitute an admission of liability and that questions of liability and culpability were matters to be determined through the investigative process. The COI’s own published mandate requires it to identify immediate, contributing and systemic causes, assess failures and recommend accountability wherever warranted. If that process has not yet produced those findings, on what basis is Government seeking a settlement containing language that, according to the family, would release it from responsibility? What precisely would the family be surrendering? Would acceptance prevent subsequent civil proceedings? Would it release only central Government, or also the Transport and Harbours Department, MARAD, responsible ministries and other State agencies? Would the payment represent compensation, notwithstanding Government’s previous insistence that its financial assistance is not compensation?
This development also makes the architecture of accountability surrounding the MV Barima considerably more important. The vessel was owned and operated by the State. A proposed settlement absolving Government of responsibility would sharpen that concern considerably. Government cannot credibly tell the country that the COI will independently determine responsibility while simultaneously asking affected families to contractually settle the question of Government responsibility before that determination has been made. One process says: let the evidence determine where responsibility lies. The other would appear to say: whatever the evidence eventually establishes, Government’s responsibility has already been negotiated away.
And that feeds directly into Mr Ali’s credibility. The President has repeatedly promised transparency, accountability, long-term support and an independent investigation. The Government is entitled to provide humanitarian assistance without thereby admitting legal liability. It is equally entitled to defend itself against civil claims. But settlement is something different from assistance, particularly if settlement requires bereaved or traumatised families to relinquish legal claims before the principal investigation into institutional responsibility has even concluded. If such agreements are being proposed, President Ali’s Government should publish the standard terms, explain whether all affected families are being approached on the same basis, disclose whether independent legal advice is being facilitated and state clearly whether acceptance of Government assistance is in any way conditional upon relinquishing future claims.
President Ali’s credibility on the MV Barima will therefore not be determined by how frequently his Government invokes compassion, transparency and accountability, but by whether those principles survive contact with the decisions being made behind closed doors. If families are being offered assistance, let Government call it assistance. If they are being offered compensation, publish the methodology. But if grieving families are being asked to accept money in exchange for absolving the State of responsibility before the State’s own Commission of Inquiry has determined where responsibility lies, then Guyanese are entitled to ask a far more serious question: is the Government already attempting to negotiateaccountability away?
Discussion