Should Minister Edghill resign?
Jul 27, 2026
(Kaieteur News) – There have been calls for Minister Juan Edghill to resign. But very few of those making that demand have justified the basis for doing so. Is it by virtue of the doctrine of ministerial responsibility? If so, there is no basis to do so as yet.
The doctrine of ministerial responsibility, as it has evolved in Westminster-style democracies, rests on a vital distinction: ministers are constitutionally answerable to parliament for every action of their departments. Yet the idea that a minister could be held personally responsible for every operational failure was recognised as unrealistic even in the 19th century.
As a House of Commons committee noted in 1985, “It is no longer reasonable that a minister be accountable or responsible when, through no fault of the minister, senior officials misuse or abuse their powers”.
This evolution produced two distinct strands: collective responsibility, where the cabinet stands or falls as a united body on matters of policy and confidence, and individual responsibility, where a minister answers for their department’s administration but is not expected to resign for every operational lapse.
Collective responsibility dictates that all ministers publicly defend government policy, and a defeat on a confidence motion triggers the resignation of the entire government—a principle that remains in practice, except in Guyana when the APNU+AFC refused to resign when required to do so following the passage of a no-confidence motion in 2018.
Individual responsibility, however, has become far more nuanced, with the expectation that ministers answer for policy failures while the permanent bureaucracy bears day-to-day operational accountability.
When it comes to individual responsibility, it must be emphasised that the Minister of Public Works cannot be held culpable for the operational faults of the Transport and Harbours Department, which in any event operates with its own board that further insulates the minister from direct responsibility for day-to-day management decisions.
The existence of this board means that the minister is further distanced from the operational chain of command, and the officials are the ones who bear direct responsibility for implementing safety protocols, maintaining vessels, and ensuring accurate record-keeping. And oversight is exercised by the Board, not the minister.
The Minister’s constitutional duty is to set policy direction and secure parliamentary funding, not to supervise the loading of cargo or verify passenger manifests on a daily basis, and it is therefore constitutionally improper to attribute any operational failures to the minister as personal faults.
There is however another doctrine, political accountability, a most contested and misunderstood element, that governs the modern convention of resignation. Under this doctrine, the minister steps down not because they are personally at fault, but because a catastrophic event on their watch has so eroded public confidence that only their departure can restore trust in the institution.
However, even in the case of political accountability, one must assess whether public confidence has genuinely been lost, and this assessment is not measured by the volume of opposition demands but by objective indicators: whether the minister retains the support of the President and Cabinet, whether the National Assembly continues to accept the minister’s explanations, and whether the broader public—beyond partisan actors—demonstrates sustained loss of trust.
Political accountability demands resignation only when the loss of public confidence is so profound and widespread that the minister can no longer effectively lead their department, not merely when the opposition party seizes upon a tragedy to score political points.
We have case law as a guide on the issue of whether the minister can be forced to resign as Minister and a member of the National Assembly by virtue of a vote of no-confidence in him or her. The answer is no.
But if there is a vote of no-confidence in the government, then the government must resign. We have been down this road before in the case involving a former Minister of Home Affairs.
When assessing the Barima case, one must ask: has the president and cabinet withdrawn their support from Minister Edghill? Is there evidence that civil servants can no longer take instructions from him? Without such objective markers, the call for resignation remains a partisan demand rather than a genuine application of political responsibility.
The key question, however, is whether the event in question resulted from policy failure rather than accident or natural causes—for if a tragedy is genuinely unforeseeable, political responsibility may not properly attach.
In the case of the MV Barima, the evidence is not yet conclusive as to the cause or causes. We have seen reports of an inaccurate manifest, crew members testing positive for marijuana, and survivors reporting rogue waves. We have heard suggestions and denials in equal measure on the question of overloading. At this stage we do not yet know whether we are dealing with human error, systemic failures or an unavoidable accident.
A minister cannot resign for an act of God. This is why it is best to await the outcome of the commission of inquiry before invoking political accountability.
Further, many of those making demands for the resignation of the public works minister lack the moral authority to do so. Guyana’s political culture has not triggered resignations for even the most catastrophic systemic failures. In the 2017 Camp Street prison fire, 18 prisoners were incinerated in what a government commission found to be a “well executed plan” enabled by overcrowded, unhygienic conditions and inadequate oversight.
Despite the clear failures, the Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan, faced no serious expectation of resignation—indeed, some commentators argued he should “not be blamed” for operational lapses within the prison service . This precedent matters: if a prison fire that killed 18 people did not trigger the application of political accountability, what standard is being now applied?
The Camp Street case demonstrates that in Guyana, political accountability has historically been treated as something way short of a binding convention—a principle invoked selectively, often by the opposition, but rarely enforced through actual resignations. This raises a legitimate question: why should the MV Barima tragedy, however horrifying its scale, require a resignation when previous disasters with systemic causes did not?
If the principle of political accountability is to have any meaning in Guyana, it must be applied consistently. Otherwise, we are simply invoking concepts that we apply selectively.
(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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