On Wednesday, August 26, 2026, Secretary to the MV Barima Commission of Inquiry (COI), Mr. Javed Shadick, informed the people of Guyana, survivors, families of those who perished more specifically, through the media that the COI’s Commissioners had not yet identified a date for the commencement of hearings and remained in the planning phase of the inquiry. Mr. Shadick further indicated that the dates, times and venues of the hearings would eventually be advertised. The nation may have been equally surprised to learn that all of the Commissioners are presently outside Guyana, despite earlier media reports suggesting that all, with the possible exception of the Chairman, were in the country.
But beyond questions surrounding the actual start up dates for the inquiry lies a more fundamental concern: the architecture of the MV Barima COI itself. A comparison with the Commission established following the 2023 Mahdia Secondary School dormitory fire — another catastrophic loss of life involving a State-owned facility and Indigenous hinterland victims — reveals similarities that are, to be blunt, difficult to overlook. The concern over the eventual outcomes or findings of the MV Barima Tragedy by survivors and the families of those who lost their lives would be quite legitimate especially when compared to what has come into the public domain following the conclusion of the Mahdia 2023 Tragedy COI. Families of those who perished in 2023 have now resorted to the courts in spite of that COI’s findings.
The Mahdia fire and the MV Barima tragedy are separated by three years and arose under entirely different circumstances. One involved a State-owned dormitory in the Mahdia mining community; the other, a State-owned vessel carrying passengers to Region One. Yet the structures established to investigate them bear a striking resemblance. Both Presidential Commissions of Inquiry were appointed by President Irfaan Ali and ultimately report to him. In neither case did the parliamentary Opposition participate in formulating the Terms of Reference. Both have Mr. Shadick serving as Secretary. Neither tragedy resulted in the resignation of the minister politically responsible for the sector involved. In the case of Mahdia COI, its findings stopped well short of ministerial accountability; regarding the MV Barima, the Ministers whose portfolios overlook maritime administration continue to function in their respective capacities. Mahdia therefore provides a completed example against which the still-unfolding Barima process will inevitably be measured.
Its COI identified failures and produced recommendations, but political responsibility travelled little distance upwards. That history makes the architecture of the Barima Commission especially important. When the Executive appoints an inquiry into institutions falling within the Executive, determines its Terms of Reference and ultimately receives its report, while the ministers politically responsible for those sectors remain in office, Guyanese are entitled to ask where political accountability enters the arrangement. A Commission may identify failures among officers, administrators, technicians and agencies; but if accountability repeatedly travels downward through the administrative structure without equally rigorous examination of responsibility at its political summit, Guyana risks developing an inquiry system exceptionally capable of explaining how the State failed while considerably less capable of determining who at its highest levels should answer for those failures.
That is why the MV Barima COI cannot simply reproduce the procedural architecture of Mahdia and expect a different level of public confidence. Its hearings should be accessible to the media, survivors, affected families and communities; its evidential reach should extend wherever the documentary trail leads — through departments, regulatory agencies, ministries and Cabinet where relevant — and its final report should be published as fully as the law permits. Most importantly, the Commission must distinguish administrative failure from political responsibility rather than allowing the former to become a substitute for the latter.
Guyana has now suffered two devastating tragedies involving State-owned facilities or assets that disproportionately affected hinterland and Indigenous communities within three years. Those two tragedies should produce lessons. But if the two tragedies instead produce substantially the same investigative architecture, the same downward trajectory of accountability and ultimately the same insulation of political authority, then Guyanese will reasonably begin questioning not merely what went wrong at Mahdia and aboard the MV Barima, but the system through which the State repeatedly investigates itself.
A Commission of Inquiry should be structured to discover responsibility wherever it resides; if its architecture repeatedly leaves those at the summit untouched while accountability settles below, the question will inevitably arise whether the 2023 Mahdia and MV Barima COIs template serves justice for the victims or institutional protection for the State.
Discussion