Faced with what he said was complete silence from the Ali Administration, civil society activist Christopher Ram is taking his fight for a functioning access to information law overseas.
For years, Ram and others have battled to force the current Commissioner of Information Charles Ramson Snr to address their requests for information. Earlier this year, Ram and others mounted protests outside the offices of Ramson and President Irfaan Ali but there was no response. However, recently Ram scored a legal victory over Ramson when Justice Nicola Pierre ruled that he must address the requests for information before him. Ramson has since appealed that decision.
In a press release yesterday, Ram said that over the last week he had written to 13 diplomatic, regional and international bodies: the heads of mission of the European Union, the United States, China, the United Kingdom, Canada and India; CARICOM; the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights; the UN Human Rights Committee; the International Monetary Fund; the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative; Transparency International; and the World Justice Project on the non-functioning of the access to information law.
“I have asked each body to act within its own mandate: the missions to raise the matter with the Government, the human rights bodies to require the State to account, and the IMF to examine the taxes the Government pays on behalf of the oil companies and how it records them. I have asked the World Justice Project, whose 2026 Rule of Law Index ranks Guyana 81st of 143 countries and 50th of 51 high-income countries, to conduct a fresh household survey in Guyana so that the Government can no longer dismiss its findings as resting on old data”, Ram stated.
On 28 September Justice Pierre held that the Commissioner is a public authority under the Access to Information Act 2011. She found that Ramson’s failure to decide Ram’s requests within the sixty days the Act allows amounted to a refusal, and that he had no right to send Ram first to other agencies. She ordered him to decide on the requests by 27 November.
“(Ramson’s) appeal, filed on 16 October, rests on the claim that he is not a public authority and that the judge in effect rewrote the statute. He also maintains that citizens must first seek information from the agency that holds it before he need act. If he succeeds, the only office the Act created to give effect to the citizen’s right to know would owe a duty to no one. With further appeals possible all the way to the Caribbean Court of Justice, the Act could lie in abeyance for a year or more while Ramson continues to draw his salary and citizens go without”, Ram lamented.
Two days before he appealed, Ram said that Ramson told Danuta Radzik who had also asked questions that the ruling by Justice Pierre was merely the decision of a puisne judge and that she (Radzik) should await final judicial directions.
Ramson had left Radzik’s request for environmental permits and hazardous waste records on the Gas to Energy project undecided for a year. Ram said that Radzik has now gone to court and has asked that Ramson pay the costs personally.
The Access to Information Act places a responsibility on the Minister responsible for information, and in October 2025 President Ali kept that portfolio for himself. Ram said that under the Act, the Minister must lay an annual report on the Act before the National Assembly; “to my knowledge, none has been laid since the Act came into force”, Ram said.
“If the Government believes in access to information, this appeal is the moment for it to step in. Its silence speaks for itself. I did not go abroad lightly. I went because every door at home has been closed. The Commissioner defies the courts, the President looks away, and the Government says nothing. I will not let up”, Ram asserted.
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