If it was a big wave, will they still want heads?

Jul 31, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – There is something increasingly troubling about the rush by some people to demand the heads of two Ministers over the M.V. Barima tragedy. The problem is not that Ministers should never be held accountable, but that accountability should come after the facts are established, not before.

One of the two Ministers being targeted does not even have ministerial responsibility for the maritime sector at present. Yet that has not stopped the calls for his resignation, as though the mere fact that he is a Minister is sufficient to make him responsible for a vessel that sank.

This begins to look less like a search for accountability and more like a search for somebody to blame. It suggests that some people have already decided who must carry the political consequences before the Commission of Inquiry has had an opportunity to determine what actually happened.

That is a serious problem. A Commission of Inquiry exists precisely because, in a tragedy as complicated as this one, there may be several competing explanations and the country needs facts rather than assumptions.

But some of the critics appear to have solved the mystery already. They seem to know who is responsible, what went wrong, who should resign and, in some cases, who should face criminal charges.

One wonders, therefore, why we are bothering with an inquiry at all. Why wait for the Commission to examine the vessel, its condition, its maintenance, the weather, the sea conditions, the crew, navigation, communications, passenger behaviour, regulatory oversight and everything else that may have contributed to the tragedy?

And why wait for the police investigation to establish what happened and why charges have already been filed against three members of the crew? If the verdict has already been reached in the court of public opinion, perhaps the investigators can simply ask the politicians for their files.

This is not an argument for protecting Ministers from accountability. Quite the opposite, Ministers must be accountable, but accountability must be proportionate to their actual responsibilities and based upon evidence.

There is a difference between ministerial culpability and political responsibility. A Minister who personally ordered an unsafe vessel to sail, ignored a known danger or deliberately disregarded a regulatory requirement cannot hide behind the machinery of government and say, “It was not me.”

But a Minister does not become personally culpable for every operational failure within an agency merely because that agency falls within his portfolio. If that were the standard, every minister would be permanently responsible for every mistake, accident, breakdown and act of negligence committed anywhere within the governmental system.

Resignation should ordinarily follow an established failure of responsibility, not simply the occurrence of a catastrophe.

So let us conduct a little thought experiment. Suppose the Commission establishes beyond reasonable doubt that the Barima toppled because of exceptionally adverse weather and sea conditions, and suppose the evidence demonstrates that this was essentially a natural disaster rather than a man-made one.

Suppose further that the Commission finds that the vessel was properly maintained, that the relevant regulations were followed, that the crew acted reasonably in the circumstances, that there was no ministerial policy failure and that no government official could reasonably have prevented what happened.

Here is the question for those demanding resignations today: Would you still demand that the Ministers resign?

And what if the final conclusion is that a massive wave struck the vessel at precisely the wrong moment and caused it to topple? Would the demand for resignation still stand?

Would the Minister suddenly become responsible for the sea? Would he be expected to resign because the Atlantic produced a wave of sufficient force to overwhelm a vessel?

If the answer is yes, then we have moved beyond accountability into something else. We have reached a position where the conclusion does not matter because the political verdict has already been determined.

That is what makes the present headhunting so dangerous. It creates the impression that the purpose is not to discover the truth but to find a politically convenient culprit.

The country deserves better than that. The families of those who died deserve better than that.

They deserve an investigation that follows the evidence wherever it leads, whether that evidence points to human error, negligence, regulatory failure, mechanical failure, operational failure, bad judgment, a combination of causes or simply an extraordinary act of nature.

And if the evidence ultimately establishes that a Minister failed in a duty that properly belonged to him, then let the consequences follow. If it establishes that an agency failed, then those responsible should answer; if it establishes criminal conduct, the courts should deal with it; and if it establishes that the tragedy was unavoidable, then we must have the courage to accept that conclusion too.

That is the meaning of a genuine search for truth. You do not begin by choosing the culprit and then ask the evidence to catch up.

So before demanding another Minister’s head, perhaps the most important question is also the simplest: What if it was a big wave?

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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• big wave, M.V. Barima, MV Barima, Peeping Tom

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