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Road to First Oil – Every Man Woman and Child Must Become Oil – Minded Column No. 196
From 12.5% to nearly 40% – How long can the good times last? Part II of II (but see note)
Part I welcomed President Irfaan Ali’s announcement that Guyana’s entitlement from the Stabroek Block production has risen from 12.5% to approximately 39.8%. That percentage reflects mainly the recovery of accumulated exploration and development costs: as less production is required as cost oil, more becomes profit oil. The value of Guyana’s increased share has been magnified by rising production and oil prices, driven in part by geopolitical events including the Russian invasion of Ukraine and, more recently, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, much of the Stabroek Block remains unexplored.
The Stabroek Block remains a developing petroleum province, with further exploration and development bringing new recoverable expenditure. New discoveries are of course welcome, but the expenditure is ultimately recovered from production. If costs rise sufficiently, more oil will be required for cost recovery, reducing profit oil and Guyana’s share. The movement from 12.5% to nearly 40% should therefore not be regarded as permanent.
ExxonMobil’s claim of force majeure over acreage affected by Venezuela’s territorial claim adds another dimension. Any extension of the exploration period postpones relinquishment and potentially allows additional exploration and development expenditure to enter the cost-recovery pool. Government should disclose the acreage and obligations affected, the period of any extension and its consequences for relinquishment. Time and acreage in Stabroek have considerable value and cannot be treated simply as matters between the Government and ExxonMobil – still less as matters for ExxonMobil alone.
The other major variable is oil price. Guyana is enjoying both a much larger share of production and sharply higher prices following the war involving the United States, Israel and Iran. At the illustrative US$90 used in Part I, Guyana’s 41.8%, including the 2% royalty, is worth US$37.62 per barrel. At US$70 the same percentage produces US$29.26 and at US$60, US$25.08. At current production levels, the difference quickly runs into billions of US dollars. The percentage has not changed, but the value of what Guyana receives certainly has.
The Bank of Guyana’s figures put the revenue surge in perspective, though they do not establish the 39.8% share. For the first six months of 2026, petroleum receipts into the Natural Resource Fund were approximately G$378 billion, compared with G$224.7 billion for the same period in 2025 – a rise of about 68%. Profit-oil receipts rose by approximately 76%. These remarkable numbers reinforce the need for Government to publish the calculations and production data behind the announced 39.8%.
Peace in Ukraine and with Iran, whenever it comes, could remove a substantial part of the current price windfall. Equally, increased recoverable exploration and development expenditure could reduce Guyana’s percentage even if oil prices remain high. Guyana’s extraordinary fortune is that both variables are presently working in its favour: cost recovery has fallen substantially while oil prices have risen sharply. Neither can be assumed to continue indefinitely.
None of this results from any change in the 2016 Petroleum Agreement. The royalty remains 2%; profit oil continues to be divided equally; and the cost-recovery, tax and stabilisation provisions remain. What has changed is the economics of the Stabroek Block. Petroleum companies are entitled to returns commensurate with the risks they undertake, and exploration can undoubtedly result in enormous losses, but that argument carries considerably less weight today than it did in 2016.
The Stabroek Block today is a proven petroleum province with enormous resources already discovered multiple developments and exceptional production. Much of the early expenditure has been recovered, the risks have diminished considerably, yet the fiscal terms remain essentially those agreed in 2016. There is therefore no contradiction between welcoming Guyana’s greatly increased revenues and continuing to regard the Agreement as inequitable. A modest share of an enormously profitable enterprise can still produce a very large cheque; the size of the cheque does not establish the fairness of the bargain.
Part I demonstrated another aspect of that bargain. Even as Guyana’s profit-oil share rises, equal profit oil does not mean equal economic benefit because the contractors enjoy substantial tax advantages under the Agreement. The billions now flowing to Guyana are therefore evidence of the exceptional value of the Stabroek Block, not proof that the contractual division of that value was fair or reasonable.
Under pressure from the independent press, especially Kaieteur News, President Ali repeated the announcement earlier made by ExxonMobil Chairman Darren Woods. Having repeated the figure, he should substantiate it after confirmation from Woods and the Ministry of Natural Resources. Guyanese should be told whether the 39.8% includes the 2% royalty, the current balance of unrecovered cost, expected exploration and development expenditure, and the projections for cost oil and profit oil over the next several years. We should also know whether the 39.8% is expected to rise, remain broadly stable or decline as additional expenditure enters the accounts.
This is not information of merely commercial interest or reserved for specialists. Petroleum revenues are now central to the national finances and the percentage of production accruing to Guyana affects present revenues, future budgets and the resources available to succeeding generations. Parliament and the public therefore have a legitimate interest not merely in the headline percentage announced by ExxonMobil and repeated by the President, but in the figures, assumptions and projections behind it. Transparency requires more than announcing good news; it requires providing the information by which that news can be understood and independently assessed.
Guyanese are understandably frustrated by the obstinate refusal of President Ali and Vice President Jagdeo to entertain even the mildest suggestion that they invoke the renegotiation provisions of the 2016 Agreement, as they had promised to do. Having secured the electorate’s trust partly on that promise, they abandoned it on taking office. The hypocrisy is obvious, but it goes further: it is a betrayal of the electorate and – to use Jagdeo’s own words – a selling out of the national interest.
Note: The scale of the increase in oil revenues raises issues which go well beyond the 2016 Agreement. I have therefore decided to add a Part III – this coming Friday – examining the danger of this explosion in oil revenues becoming a licence for more waste, uncontrolled corruption and destructive economic management.
Carl Singh-led Constitution Reform Commission is already a colossal failure with no reasonable prospect of redemption
Dear Editor,
The appearance in the press on August 15 of a notice dated June 23, 2026, signed by Attorney-at-Law Javed Shadick, Secretary to the Constitution Reform Commission, is the first public indication in some time that the Carl Singh-led Commission is still alive and, after more than two years in office, has finally reached the first stage of public consultation.
The notice invites written proposals until December 31, after which comes the second stage – public engagements. More remarkable than the timetable is that the matters on which submissions are invited are substantially a wholesale transposition of the mandate Parliament gave the Commission in Act No. 16 of 2022. This means that nearly four years after the Act and more than two years after the Commission was sworn in, it has arrived at the starting point Parliament prescribed for it.
This is not a snail’s pace. The snail, at least, keeps moving towards its destination.
There is a ready benchmark for judging this performance, and it is one which the present Commission itself invited. Ms. Gail Teixeira, now Vice-Chair of the Commission, told the National Assembly in 2022 that “repeating what happened in 1999 is the model that has been most progressive and most innovative not only in Guyana but in the entire region.” Very well. Let us make the comparison.
The 1999 Constitution Reform Commission was born out of the political crisis following the 1997 elections and the Herdmanston Accord. Its circumstances were difficult: it was the first wholesale examination of the justifiably derided 1980 Constitution; its issues were contentious; and its timetable demanding. Yet, sworn in in January 1999, the Commission considered some 4,600 proposals drawn from oral and written submissions, public hearings, organisations and individuals across the country, including substantial proposals from the PPP/C and PNCR. It drew on Guyanese and international expert advice, deliberated and reported by July, making 171 recommendations.
In roughly six months, under far greater political pressure and under the chairmanship of Mr. Ralph Ramkarran, S.C., the 1999 Commission substantially completed an exercise which the Carl Singh-led Commission, after more than two years, has barely begun.
Attorney General Anil Nandlall – never short of words – was emphatic during the debate on the legislation. He described the Commission as “time-bound and assignment-bound” and said it would have the institutional support to operate “effectively and efficiently”. Most appropriately, he told the National Assembly that the people must hold accountable those who make promises and do not deliver.
Let us apply his test.
This is not a resource-starved exercise. Hundreds of millions of public funds have been allocated to constitutional reform and its supporting machinery. I understand that the monthly payment to the Chairman is $1.3 million, the Vice Chair $500,000, each Commissioner $200,000, and the Secretary $600,000. Farcically, egregiously and unconscionably, Commission members accepted payment for each of the four months that the Commission went into recess for the 2025 elections campaign. And when it was meeting, things were hardly better: Chairman Singh himself acknowledged publicly in September 2025 that attendance by Commissioners had been a problem. Knowingly accepting public money for work one does not perform strikes me as conduct of an altogether different order from mere absenteeism.
Incredibly, the Commission and its members are entitled to the same privileges and immunities as the National Assembly and its members. Is this Government serious, or has the entire National Assembly taken leave of its senses? In any case, these privileges cannot convert non-performance into public service or unearned remuneration into value for money.
The Commission is expressly charged with considering the safeguarding of public funds and integrity in public life. It can start with itself. Every member should therefore have no difficulty confirming that the appropriate taxes have been paid on the remuneration received.
Nor is the Commission short of personnel, experience or political clout. Its twenty-one members include five Government nominees, all Ministers when appointed and already remunerated from the public purse, among them Vice-Chair Gail Teixeira and Attorney General Anil Nandlall, S.C.; four Opposition nominees; attorneys Timothy Jonas, S.C. and Kamal Ramkarran; and private-sector representative Ramesh Persaud.
Responsibility for the Commission’s dismal performance is therefore collective. It is inconceivable that these politicians, professionals and businesspeople would tolerate such delay, cost and paucity of output if their money was being spent.
There is an even more fundamental problem with the Commission’s composition. The 2025 elections swept away the political configuration on which it was constituted. Nigel Hughes, to his credit, resigned when the AFC disappeared from Parliament. Yet, the representative from the Joinder parties – ANUG, Liberty Justice Party and The New Movement – none of which is represented in the National Assembly post – 2025 remains on the Commission while WIN, with sixteen seats and now the principal Opposition party, has no representative at all.
The Attorney General himself recognised the problem. In October 2025, Mr. Nandlall acknowledged that the Act had been drafted for the previous parliamentary configuration and said that amendments had already been made to a draft Bill to reflect the new Opposition arrangement. Yet the Commission is now proceeding with public consultation without that acknowledged defect having been corrected.
The absurdity does not end there. Whatever recommendations the Commission eventually produces must enter the parliamentary process. WIN now holds sixteen of the twenty-nine Opposition seats. The Commission is therefore attempting to devise constitutional reform without the principal Opposition party, only eventually to send its proposals to a National Assembly in which that party’s support may be indispensable.
Measured against the time, resources and output, this performance amounts to gross incompetence.
While the Commission sits and waits more than four months for submissions – perhaps expecting the public to function at a pace similar to that of the Commission – the Attorney General and the Minister responsible for Finance should produce and publish a full accounting of expenditure and remuneration, while the Commission publishes its meetings and attendance, research undertaken and substantive work produced.
This Commission has had ample time to carry out a detailed assessment of the 1999 Report – including the submissions, the action taken on its recommendations, and the issues arising from their implementation or non-implementation. Where is its assessment of what was implemented, what was not, what worked, what failed and why? That should have been both its starting point and part of its invitation to the public.
Those who still hope for something useful from this exercise should remember that two genuine heavyweights – Haslyn Parris and Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine – were centrally involved in preparing the 1999 Report. But that was not all – and here I stand guilty of omissions. The Commission drew on constitutional experts including Justice Albert Sachs of South Africa, Professor Kathleen Mahoney of Canada, Anund Hylland of Norway, and our own Professor Keith Massiah, Professor Harold Lutchman and Professor Rudolph James. The question is what comparable intellectual firepower has the present Commission assembled?
Twenty-five years of experience have meanwhile supplied important issues requiring examination: the concentration of presidential power and presidential immunity; the failure to give meaningful effect to Article 13 and inclusionary democracy; constitutional appointment deadlocks, including at the apex of the judiciary; GECOM’s partisan architecture; parliamentary oversight; and genuine local government autonomy.
Guyana in 2026 is not Guyana in 1999. Petroleum wealth now raises fundamental constitutional questions about stewardship of natural resources, intergenerational equity and accountability for national wealth. Above all, constitutional reform must distinguish constitutional deficiency from constitutional non-compliance. There is little point endlessly rewriting the Constitution if governments and constitutional actors fail to observe the provisions already there.
Mr. Shadick’s advertisement has therefore performed one useful public service. It has told the country where the Commission stands in August 2026. Unfortunately, after more than two years, continuous remuneration and substantial public expenditure, it is scarcely beyond where Parliament placed it in November 2022.
Mr. Shadick himself also has some accounting to do. How does he discharge this important function as Secretary to the Commission alongside his appointment as Secretary to the presidential Commission of Inquiry into the MV Barima disaster?
And Mr. Nandlall needs no reminding. He himself told Parliament that those who make promises and do not deliver must be held accountable. That Guyanese may have forgotten the existence of the Commission about which he spoke so confidently is no excuse for its failure to account.
I am not usually a pessimist, but on the application of any reasonable test – including the Attorney General’s own metric – the Carl Singh-led Constitution Reform Commission is already a colossal failure. Nothing in its record so far suggests to me any reasonable prospect of redemption.
The question therefore is no longer whether this Commission needs more time. It is whether it should be permitted to continue in its present form. In my view, it should not. The present exercise should be ended and the task returned immediately to the constitutional Parliamentary Standing Committee for Constitutional Reform, where the political representation reflects the present National Assembly. That Committee can determine, transparently and with appropriate expert and civil-society participation, the arrangements for taking constitutional reform forward within a firm timetable and with proper accountability for public expenditure.
Yours faithfully,
Christopher Ram
From 12.5% to Nearly 40% – The Good News, and What It Means
Fri, August 21 2026, 2:01 AM GMT-4
Road to First Oil – Every Man, Woman and Child Must Become Oil Minded – Part 195
Part I of II
President Irfaan Ali brought Guyanese some genuinely good oil news this week. He announced that Guyana’s entitlement from production in the Stabroek Block has risen from the historical 12.5% to approximately 39.8%. Even if oil prices had remained unchanged, Guyana would now be receiving more than three times its earlier share. And because of the war on Iran, oil has risen more than 50% from its end-2025 price. That is great news and since I believe strongly in the old advice not to look a gift horse in the mouth, I welcome it.
This two-part column examines first what the increase means and how Guyana’s benefit compares with that of the oil companies. Part II will consider how durable this favourable position is, given today’s high oil price, prospective exploration expenditure and the unchanged terms of the 2016 Petroleum Agreement.
Let us be clear. The movement from 12.5% to nearly 40% is not the result of renegotiation. It follows from the Agreement’s cost-recovery mechanism. In the early years, up to 75% of petroleum could be allocated to recovering exploration and development costs. The remaining profit oil was divided equally, leaving Guyana with 12.5% of gross production. The logic is simple. As accumulated costs are recovered, cost oil falls, profit oil rises and Guyana’s share increases.
But first, this column notes an ambiguity over whether the 39.8% includes Guyana’s 2% royalty. The President’s own comparison points strongly to the royalty being additional. He compared today’s 39.8% with the original 12.5%, which was Guyana’s share of profit oil, not its total take including royalty. The natural reading is therefore profit oil against profit oil: 12.5% then and 39.8% now.
At an illustrative US$90 per barrel, 39.8% gives Guyana US$35.82 of profit oil. The 2% royalty adds US$1.80, producing US$37.62 per barrel, or 41.8% of gross value. If instead the 39.8% includes royalty, Guyana’s profit oil would be US$34.02, which with the US$1.80 royalty gives US$35.82. Either way, the improvement is substantial.
But nearly equal profit-oil shares do not mean equal economic benefits. The 2016 Agreement contains two major tax concessions to the contractors: the Government pays their corporation tax and provides the corresponding tax certificates, while distributions and remittances of profits are exempt from withholding tax.
The companies’ tax benefits
For illustration, I treat profit oil as taxable profit, apply corporation tax at 25%, and assume after-tax profit would otherwise attract 20% withholding tax, with no other adjustments. For every US$100 of profit oil, the corporation-tax benefit is therefore US$25. The remaining US$75 would attract US$15 withholding tax. On these assumptions, every US$100 of profit oil carries US$40 of tax benefits.
On what I consider the more likely interpretation; Guyana receives US$37.62 in profit oil and royalty. The companies receive US$35.82 of profit oil, plus an assumed US$8.96 corporation-tax benefit and US$5.37 withholding-tax benefit – a total economic benefit of US$50.15 per barrel. That is US$12.53, or approximately one-third, more than Guyana.
If the 39.8% includes royalty, Guyana receives US$35.82, while the companies receive US$34.02 of profit oil plus US$8.51 and US$5.10 in assumed tax benefits, giving them US$47.63. Again, their economic benefit is approximately one-third greater.
These figures are illustrative, not calculations of the companies’ actual tax returns or tax certificates. Taxable income can be affected by deductions and other adjustments. The purpose is to expose the structure of the bargain: equal profit oil does not mean equal economic benefit. Guyana receives a 2% royalty on top of its profit oil; the companies receive substantial tax benefits on top of theirs.
Cautionary tale
None of this diminishes the announcement. Moving from 12.5% to nearly 40% profit oil is excellent news. At present production and prices, the additional revenue is enormous. The cost-recovery mechanism that once restricted Guyana’s profit-oil share to 12.5% is now working strongly in our favour because enormous, accumulated costs have been recovered.
But today’s position reflects unusually favourable circumstances. Much of the earlier investment has been recovered, production is at record levels and oil is around US$90. Yet not a word of the 2016 Petroleum Agreement has changed. The 2% royalty remains; the tax concessions remain; the withholding-tax exemption remains; and the cost-recovery and stabilisation provisions remain. The economics have changed. The contract has not.
Nor are today’s economics guaranteed to continue. Oil was around US$61 at the end of 2025 and has risen sharply with the US/Israeli war on Iran. Prices can fall again. ExxonMobil and its partners also retain substantial exploration ambitions, and renewed exploration and development could generate another major cycle of recoverable expenditure, increasing cost oil and reducing Guyana’s profit-oil percentage.
Those issues belong in Part II. We should welcome the movement from 12.5% to nearly 40% for what it is: very good news for Guyana. But the next question is more difficult: how long can these favourable conditions last, and does receiving much more under the 2016 Agreement make the Agreement itself any less inequitable?
To be continued
Disgraceful for VP Jagdeo, Min. Bharrat to allow citizens to rely on Exxon for updates on recovery of all investments – Christopher Ram
…as Gov’t yet to address nation on promised 50% oil profits
(Kaieteur News) – Since July 31, 2026 ExxonMobil announced to its shareholders that the company has recovered all of its investments made in Guyana to develop the seven projects approved to date – a significant development in the country’s petroleum sector that is yet to be addressed by the Government of Guyana (GoG).
Attorney and Chartered Accountant, Christopher Ram in a scathing commentary to this newspaper on the matter blasted the administration for its silence on such a key milestone in the nation’s oil story, describing it as an act of disgrace for government to leave citizens reliable on information supplied by a multinational corporation that has proven to be “less than straight and honest” in its dealings locally.
Ram has been a vocal advocate against the GoG for its appalling lack of transparency in the management of the oil and gas sector, leading a string of protests last year particularly against the Commissioner of Information, Charles Ramson (SC) whom he accused of guarding key information instead of making same available upon the request of citizens.
In an invited comment on the recovery of some US$55B in investment and operating expense by ExxonMobil, Ram said Guyana is now positioned to receive 50% of profit oil which is what is available after the deduction of recoverable expenses.
The Chartered Accountant was careful to point out, “This statement that Guyana will receive 50% of all oil produced is absolutely and verifiably misleading. It is also not consistent with the provisions of the contract.”
“How disgraceful it is that we have no less than a Vice President (Bharrat Jagdeo) and a cabinet minister responsible for the petroleum sector (Vickram Bharrat), and yet we have to rely on Exxon whose accounting has been less than straight and honest to provide us with information on the recovery of all their costs.” – Christopher Ram
Shifting his attention to the fact that the GoG is yet to address the nation on this issue, the lawyer argued, “How disgraceful it is that we have no less than a Vice President (Bharrat Jagdeo) and a cabinet Minister responsible for the petroleum sector (Vickram Bharrat), and yet we have to rely on Exxon whose accounting has been less than straight and honest to provide us with information on the recovery of all their costs.”
He added that Guyana must now wait to see what charges and provisions will now be concocted and invented to ensure the nation does not realise a larger share of profit from the agreement.
More than two weeks have now elapsed since the major announcement was made by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chairman of Exxon, Darren Woods. During the company’s second quarter earnings call on July 31, 2026 the CEO described Guyana’s progress as a success story that has set a new standard for the industry, exceeding even the company’s expectations. Exxon said it expected the cost bank to be cleared in another two years. Woods however said, “Delivering on tight schedules, at industry-leading cost – with strong reliability and optimised production – has resulted in recovering our capital and cost nearly two years earlier than anticipated, increasing NPV, and desaturating the cost bank.”
On August 11, the Natural Resources minister told this newspaper that a statement would be issued by the GoG. Up to the time of this report, this commitment was not honoured.
Former Finance Minister, Winston Jordan previously told this newspaper that Guyana is now entitled to a larger share of the resources being generated offshore but instead of government providing full disclosure on what the recovery of Exxon’s investments means for the nation, citizens continue to be left in the dark while the opposition appears caught up in other matters.
Jordan explained, ““…in accordance with the PSA, profit should now be calculated in the usual manner, that is revenue minus all eligible expenditure, and shared in the same 50:50 split.”
He continued, “I’ve seen calculations where expenditure could go down to about 37% of revenues, which would leave 63% as profit to be shared equally between. That means GoG would be entitled to 31.5%+2% royalty = 33.5%.”
He pointed out that this would be more than double the 14.5% Guyana currently receives in profit along with the 2% royalty.
Moreover, he highlighted that this could result in the Natural Resource Fund (NRF) receiving between US$8-10 billion annually at current oil prices – up from the average US$2.7 billion.
My position on the Crisis within the CCJ
The CCJ Crisis: Its President Has Responded. Questions Remain.
The lengthy statement by CCJ President Justice Winston Anderson is an important development in a crisis which has damaged the integrity and perceived impartiality of the Court – hopefully not irreparably, but certainly for years to come, particularly if the existing leadership remains in place.
Justice Anderson deserves credit for responding publicly. He rejects allegations of panel fixing and improper attempts to influence judicial outcomes. His explanations deserve fair consideration, but cannot substitute for an independent examination of allegations made by five of the Court’s six other sitting judges.
Two of the controversies are of particular importance to Guyana. On the Mohamed extradition case, Justice Anderson does not directly answer Justice Jamadar’s specific allegation that he attempted to influence colleagues whose views differed from his. Unanimity in the eventual result does not answer an allegation about the integrity of the process by which that result was reached.
The other concerns Guyana’s Judiciary, for which the Constitution makes specific provision. Anderson now acknowledges that in October 2025 he privately sought to encourage agreement on the substantive appointments of Chancellor and Chief Justice, speaking separately with President Irfaan Ali and then Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton. He concedes that another course would have been better and that he might have confined himself to public commentary, as his predecessors had done.
This not only reflects poor judgment unbecoming of the holder of such an exalted judicial office, but raises the more important question whether the President of Guyana’s final appellate court should intervene in a constitutional process entrusted to the President and Leader of the Opposition of a Member State.
Significantly, Anderson sidesteps Norton’s more specific allegations: that he sought Norton’s agreement to particular appointments; said that he had participated in negotiations concerning then acting Chancellor Yonette Cummings-Edwards and sought to facilitate them; and told Norton that the President and others were waiting to swear in the proposed appointees, indicating when questioned that he had been with President Ali.
In a lengthy statement intended to answer the controversies surrounding him, omissions of that significance cannot simply be dismissed as oversight.
Nor can responsibility rest with Justice Anderson alone. At the political level, the circumstances demanded strict observance of the separation between Executive and Judiciary. Instead, President Ali appears to have lent support to an intervention by the President of the CCJ in a process which, according to Norton, encompassed the departure of the then acting Chancellor and the proposed appointment of Guyana’s two highest judicial officers.
Ali must – but won’t – explain his role in these serious matters. Who initiated the discussions? What was discussed? What did he understand Anderson’s role to be? Was the Attorney General consulted?
More fundamentally, if the President was prepared to engage the head of Guyana’s final appellate court in such an intervention at the apex of the judicial system, Guyanese are entitled to ask where he believes the boundary lies between legitimate executive action and interference with the Judiciary. If Ali is prepared to cross that boundary with the apex court, what assurance is there that it will be respected in the domestic courts?
Against this background, Guyana’s institutional responses are disappointing. The Bar Association concentrated on confidentiality and expressly declined to address the substance. That position will inevitably reinforce existing suspicions about its political independence.
For its part, Guyana’s judicial leadership associated itself with a regional statement which declined to address the merits while expressing grave concern about the breach of confidentiality. Given Guyana’s exceptional involvement, was there consultation within our Judiciary before its leadership joined that statement?
There is also an unavoidable issue of perception. In the 2018 presidential term-limits case, Justice Anderson was the lone dissenting judge in the CCJ’s six-to-one decision upholding Guyana’s constitutional term limits. His dissent was entirely within his judicial right and is not evidence of political bias. But his subsequent acknowledged intervention with Guyana’s political Executive inevitably causes that history to be viewed in a new and uncomfortable context.
The controversy also unfairly casts a shadow over the acting Chancellor and acting Chief Justice and their prospects for confirmation. Nothing disclosed establishes wrongdoing by either. That unfair consequence itself demonstrates why the appointment process should have been insulated from outside intervention.
Finally, the Guyana Bar Association and the regional judicial leadership elevated the leaking of confidential correspondence above grave allegations which the CCJ President’s lengthy statement has only partially addressed. There is no evidence that any of the five judges leaked the emails. The disclosure could have come from anyone with access. What matters is that the correspondence exposed an atmosphere harmful to the Court and the Region. The five judges did not create this crisis by raising these concerns. The crisis lay in the conditions that caused them to do so.
Justice Anderson’s statement is welcome but incomplete. It cannot be the final word.
Saturday, August 15, 2026