Dear Editor,
Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed’s dramatic offer to personally finance and undertake the salvage of the MV Barima is, on closer inspection, more theatre than statesmanship.
Mr. Mohamed frames the government’s position — that the fate of the wreck should rest with the families of the victims — as evidence of something to hide. But this gets the ethics of the situation backwards. It is the government’s restraint, not the opposition leader’s grand gesture, that reflects the more responsible course.
Consider the vessel itself. The MV Barima was 87 years old, already overdue for major repairs, and by all accounts structurally compromised well before it went down. A wreck of that age, sitting at the bottom of the Atlantic, is not simply a crime scene to be hoisted to the surface at will. Decades of corrosion, structural fatigue, and the trauma already inflicted on the hull make any salvage operation inherently risky — to divers, to any remaining human remains, and to the physical evidence the promised Commission of Inquiry will need. Handled recklessly, a rushed salvage could destroy the very evidence Mr. Mohamed claims to want preserved, and could imperil the safety of the salvage crews themselves.
By contrast, the government’s approach — to let the final decision rest with the grieving families rather than impose one from Georgetown — is the more measured and, frankly, the more humane position. It resists the temptation to act unilaterally on a matter that is first and foremost personal to those who lost loved ones, and it does not gamble a fragile, decades-old wreck on a politically timed publicity offer.
Guyana would hardly be breaking new ground by choosing restraint. When the MV Estonia sank in the Baltic Sea in 1994, killing more than 850 people, Estonia, Finland, and Sweden ultimately agreed to designate the wreck a protected grave site rather than raise it, out of respect for victims’ families and concern over disturbing the remains. Similarly, the wreck of the Titanic has been treated by international agreement as a maritime memorial rather than a site to be dredged up and picked apart, precisely because of the risks that disturbing a deteriorated hull poses to both the dead and the historical record. In both cases, governments concluded that leaving a tragedy where it lay was not evasion, but respect.
That timing is itself worth noting. Mr. Mohamed’s proposal arrives amid parliamentary disruptions over the tragedy and criminal charges against the ferry’s captain — a moment when a bold, headline-grabbing offer to “do what government won’t” carries obvious political value. An opposition leader who is himself contesting extradition proceedings abroad has every incentive to recast himself as the champion of transparency and justice. That does not make the gesture illegitimate, but it does make it worth scrutinizing rather than applauding uncritically.
Guyanese deserve accountability for the MV Barima tragedy — a thorough inquiry, consequences for negligence, and dignity for the families who lost so much. None of that requires rushing to raise an aging wreck from the ocean floor on the say-so of a politician eager for the cameras. Patience, not grandstanding, is what this moment calls for.