Enforcing the Access to Information Act

Aug 21, 2025 Editorial, News

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Kaieteur News – Exactly one week ago, Kaieteur News questioned Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo about his government’s failure to enforce the Access to Information Act and was told that the issue would be dealt with in the PPP/C’s manifesto.

Given that the Office of the Commissioner of Information had decayed into irrelevance, one was expecting promises of sweeping reform, instead, as if it were an afterthought the manifesto mentioned as part of a sentence” and fully enforce the Access to Information Act.” Like many Guyanese, we were not optimistic that the PPP would make any grand promise on this matter given the sordid record of its general secretary in the area of media relations.

In their pre-election statement, the Carter Center touched on the issue, not confining its observations on elections, but the general lack of access to public information. The center said that access to information is a critical means of ensuring informed public participation, and transparency and accountability in the electoral process. The center said elections conducted in the absence of adequate public access to information, including on key election-related matters, harm the electoral process. “A well-informed electorate is essential to any electoral process and is an essential building block of a meaningful democracy,” the statement read.

The Center added that cumulative shortcomings, such as timely completion and publication of the census, the absence of campaign and party finance data, limited information around GECOM decision-making, and obstacles faced by some media outlets and citizens in obtaining public information, constitute a lack of adequate public access to election-relevant information. “The U.N. Human Rights Committee, in its May 2024 report, noted concerns that the commissioner of information does not respond to all requests and urged Guyana to ensure the right of access to information is effectively exercised,” the statement concluded.

For years, the Office of the Commissioner of Information has been little more than a nameplate on paper and Jagdeo did nothing. Journalists, activists, and ordinary Guyanese seeking information on critical contracts and other documents under the law have been met with silence, obstruction, or outright neglect. The Commissioner’s chronic failure to respond to queries has not only undermined the Access to Information Act but has also betrayed the very principles of transparency and accountability that the office was created to uphold. This has resulted in journalists and civil society being forced onto the streets to protest- a state of affairs that should never have existed in the first place.

Now, after years of inaction, the government suddenly speaks, but appears half-committed to fully enforcing the Access to Information Act. The obvious question remains: why now, given that ensuring the act works requires no elaborate legislative gymnastics; all it takes is a presidential order to appoint a competent and active Commissioner. Five years of ineptitude cannot be erased with empty promises timed conveniently before elections.

If the government truly believed in transparency, they would have enforced the act long ago. To dangle it now, as a political carrot, is nothing short of a sham. Guyana has known no other commissioner of information since the Access to Information Act was enacted here in 2011 rather than Charles Ramson Snr, a former attorney general who has been a total failure, delivering nothing to Guyanese who seek the services of his office, but the current administration seems unbothered. It must be recalled that for Guyana to even get to the place where it has the Access to Information Act took tremendous lobbying and even protest. It is disappointing though, that to even get the act to work requires more protest.

The government’s new pledge must therefore be read for what it is: a sham. It is not a commitment to reform but a campaign gimmick. For half a decade, those in charge had every opportunity to breathe life into the Access to Information Act. They chose instead to suffocate it. For half a decade, the people of Guyana were denied a functional watchdog office that could shine light into the dark corners of government. They chose instead to embrace opacity. That can not be forgotten. Democracy cannot thrive in the dark, and it cannot thrive when accountability offices are allowed to collapse.

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• Access, Act, Bharrat Jagdeo, Editorial, information

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