Author: Christopher Ram

Dear Editor,

I write to make an urgent appeal to the Speaker of the National Assembly, the Leader of the House, the Leader of the Opposition, and the Prime Minister regarding the Oil Pollution Prevention, Preparedness, Response and Responsibility Bill 2025, tabled by the Prime Minister last Friday.

This legislation represents one of the most critical environmental and economic bills ever presented to our Parliament. The reliance of the national economy on a single sector or company has never before been greater – drawings from the NRF into the Consolidated Fund account for 50% of 2025 revenues. And that is only part of the total direct revenue from the oil-producing companies. Clearly, then, any oil spill could have enormous consequences: the emphasis should be on prevention rather than cleaning up.  That is what makes this Bill so important.

 My assessment of the Bill is that it has technical deficiencies and legal ambiguities that could undermine its effectiveness. For example, clause 21 is framed in overly broad language that may inadvertently invalidate standard parent company guarantees essential to international oil operations. The Bill also lacks specific technical standards for response capabilities, relying on undefined terms like “adequate response.” Most concerning, it provides no dedicated funding mechanism for Commission operations, effectively requiring taxpayers to subsidise preparedness for corporate environmental risks.

I therefore appeal to our leaders to:

Immediately refer the Bill to a Select Committee.

Establish clear terms of reference for a comprehensive technical review.

Allow adequate time for stakeholder consultation and expert input.

Ensure that the Committee reports back with amendments before the Bill is returned to the National Assembly.

While I understand the urgency to establish regulatory frameworks, hasty passage of deficient legislation serves no one’s interests. We have seen, in the case of the Natural Resource Fund Act, the detrimental effects of rushing through critical legislation without adequate consultation and participation. The stakes are too high for anything less than the best efforts of the National Assembly and all Guyanese.

Sincerely,

Christopher Ram

Dear Editor,

I write to share the latest information on Guyana’s dismal state of transparency and right to information.  On April 14, 2025, on behalf of a group of civil society organisations and individuals, I wrote the President, who holds the Portfolio for Information, requesting a meeting regarding the Office of the Commissioner of Information’s failures: no mandatory annual reports tabled, unanswered public information requests, and erosion of citizens’ constitutional right to information. A briefing note accompanied the letter.

There was no response to the letter, and therefore no meeting. To deny citizens the courtesy of a response is bad enough. To effectively refuse to discuss an issue of which you hold portfolio responsibility, and which is the oxygen of democracy and the essence of good governance, does a disservice to the Presi-dent’s Office. 

On 23rd April 2025, I sent a pre-action letter to Mr. Charles Ramson Snr., Commissioner of Information and the Minister of Natural Resources, reminding them of long-outstanding requests for information and indicating my intention to approach the Courts if they still refused my request. I received a response from Mr. Ramson that was dismissive, characterising my concerns as “transparently relentless, brazen alignment with the agenda-driven, political media malcontents.” He mocked citizens’ rights as a “self-induced myth of a constitutional right to information” and my concerns as “manicured spasms of delusional concern, opportunistic at best, but deceptively disruptive at worst.”

Rather than address his statutory failures, Ramson threatens that his office “will strenuously defend on its behalf, any mischievously contrived litigation, however authored” – an apparent attempt to intimidate citizens exercising their legal rights.

The irony is stark. This Office was established to facilitate the enjoyment of several constitutional rights, guaranteeing inclusive democracy and the right to information. Instead, it consumes tens of millions in public funds while producing nothing of value. It is highly disappointing that the President condones this flagrant mockery of transparency by his silence.

Having exhausted all reasonable avenues, I will shortly initiate legal proceedings to obtain the information I sought. The rule of law must be upheld, particularly by those sworn to administer it. Our group will soon resume its public campaign to obtain our rights.

I call on my fellow Guyanese to follow the example of a Trinidadian who, a couple of years ago, was confronted with a denial of access to information and who successfully pursued his case all the way to the Privy Council. I wonder whether the Law Lords silently asked themselves: what a backward culture that requires its citizens to resort to such extreme action.  

I am providing copies of all three letters referenced in this correspondence for transparency and public interest. They allow the public to judge the inadequacies of the official attitude and responses.

Sincerely,

Christopher Ram

Dear Editor,

Two weeks ago, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (PC), the highest court of Trinidad and Tobago, handed down a ruling that affects the entire Region. The decision in Methanex Corporation v The Board of Inland Revenue of Trinidad and Tobago [2024] UKPC 6, raises difficult but long overdue questions about the weaknesses of CARICOM’s legal architecture, the aging 1994 CARICOM Double Tax-ation Agreement (the Agreement), and the troubling consequences of maintaining a bifurcated system of final appellate courts within the region.

At the heart of the case was a dispute between Trinidad and Tobago’s tax authorities and Methanex, a wholly owned Canadian-controlled enterprise that has routed its Carib-bean operations through a subsidiary incorporated in Barbados. Methanex claimed benefits under the 1994 Agreement, arguing that it was a resident of a CARICOM member state (Barbados) and therefore entitled to relief under the treaty. 

The Privy Council, taking a literal and formalistic reading of the treaty’s text, agreed. It ruled that the absence of a Limitation on Benefits clause, a principal purpose test, or any economic substance requirement meant that Methanex was entitled to treaty benefits. In doing so, it rejected a more modern, progressive purposive interpretation offered by the Trinidadian courts below, which had urged a reading of the Agreement in line with its objective of promoting regional economic integration.

While the ruling is legally defensible under the Agreement’s text, it reveals a deeper failure –  not of the judiciary or the legal profession, but of regional governance. The 1994 Agreement replaced a 1973 agreement that was more narrowly drawn and intended to operate as a closed treaty, available only to those genuinely resident and operating within the region. In contrast, the 1994 Agreement is now shown to function effectively as an open treaty, accessible to any person or entity formally subject to tax in a CARICOM member state, even if that connection is nominal or commercially artificial.

The Agreement has remained untouched for thirty-one years des-pite repeated warnings about its deficiencies. It lacks some of the modern safeguards in international tax treaties. Yet efforts to revise it have been met with institutional lethargy. CARICOM’s leadership has failed to initiate reform, and its economic affairs committees have not acted. Methanex has exposed and exploited the region’s tax base. Suriname is right not to subscribe to the Agree-ment in its present form.

The case is ripe with painful irony. It was brought by Trinidad and Tobago, which continues to reject the appellate jurisdiction of the Caribbean Court of Justice. Methanex, by contrast, is incorporated in Barbados, which has embraced the CCJ. Yet, it is Trinidad’s preferred final court, the Privy Council, whose ruling will most benefit foreign-controlled companies seeking tax advantages at the entire region’s expense – including Trinidad’s. Most directly, the Privy Council overruled Trinidad’s Tax Court and its Court of Appeal. 

This contradiction extends to legal principles and the Privy Council as well. In 1976, in the Jamaican case, popularly referred to as Seramco, the PC embraced substance over form, a philosophy adopted later by the House of Lords in the famous Ramsay case. That is also Guyana’s approach, founded in separate judgments handed down by temporary Justices of Appeal Rafiq Khan and Dr. Arif Bulkan. In fact, substance over form has long been part of Guyana’s Income Tax Act (section 74). A further irony is that the Methanex decision does not bind the UK, where the substance over form principle was formally adopted in a landmark House of Lords case. 

Methanex signals a return to formalism, privileging nominal residence over commercial reality. The spirit of Seramco survives in theory but has been undermined in practice. 

Some may argue that companies like Methanex bring investment and employment to the region, and that legal certainty is essential. That is true. However, the issue is not whether tax treaties should exist or whether international companies are welcome. It is whether a multilateral regional treaty, explicitly intended to foster intra-regional economic integration, trade and investment, should be used to deliver tax advantages to third-country multinationals with no substantial commitment to the region’s development.

Indeed, in jurisdictions like Guyana and Barbados, Canadian investors are already covered by bilateral treaties with Canada. The availability of the CARICOM treaty as an additional option means they can choose whichever arrangement yields the most favourable tax outcome, effectively converting a regional integration instrument into a platform for treaty shopping.

If individual CARICOM states wish to offer tax relief to non-CARICOM jurisdictions, they can do so through bilateral treaties. That is a sovereign prerogative. But it is wholly inappropriate to use a regional framework designed for unity and shared prosperity as a tool of convenience for external actors. In this sense, the Methanex decision is not just about one company’s tax status. It is about the erosion of regionalism itself.

We are often told that treaty reform in CARICOM is difficult because it requires the elusive unanimity. But what we now have is unanimity of exposure. The Agreement makes every CARICOM state vulnerable to treaty shopping, base erosion, and the loss of tax revenues meant to fund public services and development goals.

CARICOM countries must respond to this decision. The 1994 CARICOM Agreement must be revised or supplemented by protocols that insert modern anti-abuse clauses. The CARICOM Secretariat must take the lead, and those states that support the CCJ must continue pressing for judicial coherence. But above all, we must restore the principle that our regional instruments serve regional interests.

We cannot afford two final courts, two tax philosophies, and one treaty that serves neither. The price of disunity is being paid in revenue lost, sovereignty diminished, and a regional project undermined by its own contradictions.

Yours faithfully,

Christopher Ram

Dear Editor,

I express heartfelt condolences to the parents and other loved ones of 11-year-old Adriana Younge, whose tragic and suspicious death has plunged our nation into grief and turmoil. The pain and anger felt by all Guyanese – not only parents and family members – are real. The public outrage over the police’s handling of this matter is legitimate. But violence, destruction and attacks on innocent people are not justice.  They are wounds upon an already hurting nation.

We cannot demand accountability and responsibility from our law enforcement agencies while engaging in lawless behaviour ourselves. Nothing good comes from violence against fellow Guyanese. We must respect the law and uphold peace and order. Only then can we create the conditions for real change and true justice.

I have witnessed cycles of violence in almost every decade since the 1960s. Core issues like a constitutional autocracy require fundamental changes, not band-aids that legitimise poor governance, lack of accountability, bribery and corruption, and the entrenchment of a narrow class. Completely unmindful that the death of Adriana is only the latest in a series of disturbing acts of gender-based violence, the Speaker of the National Assembly was reported on Monday to have summarily blocked debate on a motion intended to establish an alert system for missing children.

This decision is both deeply disappointing and profoundly troubling in the current climate. It also recalls other unresolved atrocities, including the horrific sexual abuse of a child from one of our minority communities. In that case, the court cleared the suspect, a minister of government no less, for lack of evidence. It is widely believed that the charge against the suspected perpetrator was dismissed following a reported financial settlement with the victim’s family.

Calls for action against pervasive corruption are met with excuses and more corruption. Ruling parties, their families, friends and favourites operate and are enriched as though they are above the law. The parliamentary system is abused; constitutional and public bodies are compromised and controlled; the election system is broken, and the regional system designed to foster democracy is tightly controlled from the centre.

White-collar crime, including tax evasion and favouritism, is now part of the governance system. The rich have become mega-rich, while the rest of society remains impoverished.   At the same time, poorer areas like Buxton, which I visited two weeks ago, remain deplorable.

The vice president who cynically circumvents the constitutional term limit holds a weekly press conference marked by divisive and inflammatory language, mocking and insulting individuals who dare to raise questions. This pattern of behaviour contributes to further polarising our society and normalising its own form of violence.

Every initiative by civil society that does not align with the government is dismissed as politically motivated and opposition-driven. The government seeks to dominate every inch of political space and every iota of public opinion, leaving little room for genuine dialogue and reform.

Governments act as if election victory, however narrow, confers ownership of the nation’s resources. No, they impose responsibility and a duty to legally, transparently and accountably manage the country’s resources to benefit all citizens, not half-Guyana.

Our constitutional bodies must function independently and professionally, serving the people of Guyana – not those who appoint them. The Constitution Reform Commission must come out from under its shell and carry out its duties. The Public Procurement Commission must ensure contracts are awarded transparently and do something about the pervasive and credible reports of bribery and corruption. The Integrity Commission must uphold ethical governance. Bodies like GECOM, the FIU, SOCU, the DPP, the Commission of Information the Audit and yes, the Police Force, must fulfill their mandates.

Our opposition parties have not helped either. They have failed to provide leadership, action, energy and effort. As challenging as their task is, they can do much more to offer hope and to expose the injustices so evident around us.   

There is no reason why women and children must go through the trauma of violence and deaths as if it is so normal. Or why our society should be riven with widespread violence every decade or so. Let us not fail Adriana twice.

Rest In Peace, Adriana. 

Yours faithfully,

Christopher Ram