Some moments define a nation’s trajectory, inflection points where the choices made determine whether a country rises to meet its challenges or succumbs to them. For Guyana, the bombing at a Georgetown gas station that claimed the life of six-year-old Soraya Bourne may well be such a moment.
The explosion that occurred at the intersection of Regent and King Street was not merely a criminal act. According to government authorities, it was an act of terrorism. But beyond the official classification lies a more troubling reality: the bombing exposed deep, systemic vulnerabilities in Guyana’s national security infrastructure, vulnerabilities that have been years in the making and that, according to some, were entirely predictable.
To understand what happened and, more importantly, what it means for Guyana’s future, I sat down with Hon. Amanza Walton-Desir, Member of Parliament and one of the most vocal advocates for national security reform in the country. What emerged from our conversation was not just an analysis of a single tragic incident, but a comprehensive examination of how political immaturity, institutional decay, and willful neglect have left Guyana dangerously exposed at precisely the moment when it can least afford to be.
If there was a sense of grim vindication in Walton-Desir’s voice during our conversation, it was earned. For approximately five years, she has been sounding the alarm about the security implications of Guyana’s approach to Venezuelan migration. Not the migrants themselves, many of whom, she emphasizes, are hardworking people seeking dignity and economic opportunity, but rather the absence of any coherent policy framework to manage the influx and, critically, to screen for potential threats embedded within it. “This is something that I’ve been speaking about, I think, for the last five years,” she told me, “since maybe a year after I entered into the National Assembly, and particularly about the fact that this influx of migrants and the opening of our borders, it was allowed as a part of a larger plot by this government to engineer the population and to give Guyanese citizenship to those who are not entitled to it.”
Her warnings were dismissed. She was called xenophobic by government ministers, including the very minister now grappling with the consequences of policies she criticized. It is a pattern Walton-Desir describes as symptomatic of the “immaturity of our politics,” in which warnings are evaluated based on who delivers them rather than their substance, and in which party loyalty trumps national interest. “What you’re seeing playing out here,” she said, “is that we heed warnings based on who they’re coming from, and not based on our commitment to this country and to the people of this country.”
The result of ignoring those warnings is now tragically evident. The gas station bombing, according to authorities, was carried out by a Venezuelan national who entered Guyana illegally via boat at 8:00 AM on a Sunday and executed the attack at 7:15 PM that same day. Nine individuals are now in custody, a mix of Venezuelan nationals and Guyanese citizens, suggesting a coordinated network with both foreign and domestic components. This was not the first such incident. A police station had previously been targeted with an explosive device. A GPL substation was attacked. Each incident, taken individually, might be dismissed as isolated criminal activity. Viewed together, they suggest something more systematic: a probing of defenses, a testing of response capabilities, a campaign of psychological intimidation.
To understand what Guyana is facing, it is essential to move beyond conventional frameworks of crime and violence. What Walton-Desir describes and what the pattern of attacks suggests is something far more sophisticated: hybrid warfare designed to destabilize the nation psychologically without the need for declared military conflict. “This wasn’t random violence,” she emphasized. “This was a signal activity. The choice of target, the methodology suggests an operation with command and control and a very coordinated one, and not one that was executed on impulse.”
Consider the audacity of the perpetrator in the gas station case. According to eyewitness accounts, the individual did not attempt a disguise. He looked directly at the gas station attendant, made eye contact, and walked away calmly after being prevented from placing the explosive device in a bin adjacent to fuel pumps. Had those pumps ignited, a significant portion of central Georgetown would not be standing. This level of brazenness, Walton-Desir argues, is deliberate. “It is telling us that our capacity is being tested,” she said. “It is telling us that our response capability, the coordination of our law enforcement agencies, is being tested.”
What makes hybrid warfare particularly insidious is its exploitation of vulnerabilities that exist below the threshold of conventional military conflict. It operates through population engineering via migration, infiltration of fifth columnists among legitimate migrants, attacks designed not to achieve military objectives but to undermine public confidence and create psychological instability, and the exploitation of political divisions and institutional weaknesses. “There is this blend of sabotage, of intimidation,” Walton-Desir explained, “and the intent is to psychologically destabilize Guyana without it being declared open war.”
If hybrid warfare succeeds by exploiting institutional weaknesses, then Guyana has handed its adversaries a gift: a catastrophic deficit of public trust in the very institutions meant to protect citizens. Throughout our conversation, Walton-Desir returned to this theme repeatedly. It is, she believes, the foundational problem that undermines every other security measure. “No Counter Terrorism Unit or any counterterrorism initiative that we have could be effective where there is a vacuum,” she said, “and in a vacuum of public trust, it simply will not happen.”
The erosion of trust did not happen overnight. It is the cumulative effect of years of what Walton-Desir describes as the weaponization of law enforcement against political opponents, the selective application of laws based on party affiliation, the use of cybercrime legislation not to protect infrastructure but to punish critics who cause ministers “emotional distress,” and the repeated prioritization of covering up mistakes over acknowledging them and correcting course. The consequences are profound. When authorities announce they have the perpetrator of the gas station bombing in custody, when they provide details about his movements and affiliations, approximately 90 percent of Guyanese citizens, according to Walton-Desir’s assessment, do not believe them. Not because the information is necessarily false, but because trust has been so thoroughly destroyed that official statements are presumed unreliable.
“Do you see what I’m saying?” she asked, her frustration evident. “The very system being used in the Adriana Young matter to mislead and to deceive, and so in the back of the mind of every Guyanese is, can we trust these people? And in fact, they’ve concluded that they cannot trust them.” This creates a dangerous quandary. A population that does not trust its security apparatus will not cooperate with it. Citizens will not report suspicious activity if they believe the police are political instruments rather than protectors. They will not accept public warnings at face value. They will not participate in the collective vigilance that adequate security requires.
Worse still, the trust deficit creates a volatile instability where the population swings between extremes. Either citizens become hypervigilant to the point of paranoia, subjecting innocent migrants to unwarranted scrutiny and discrimination, or they become completely dismissive of genuine threats, going about their lives with dangerous complacency. “We really are in a quandary here,” Walton-Desir said, “and it is, it is the actions of this government, and I have no qualms about saying this, that have left us in this vulnerable place.”
Beyond the trust deficit lies a second fundamental problem: Guyana lacks a coherent structural architecture for national security. The country operates without what Walton-Desir calls a unifying national security doctrine. This framework clearly defines how military, police, and intelligence agencies should coordinate, where their responsibilities overlap, and how they interrelate. “Our greatest weakness is structural,” she emphasized. “It’s not technical.” The absence of structure manifests in multiple ways. Parliament has a Security Sectoral Committee, chaired by Prime Minister Mark Phillips, that should provide oversight and coordination. During the previous parliamentary term, that committee did not convene a single meeting. Not once in five years. The Foreign Relations Sectoral Committee, which should address transnational security threats, met only four times in the same period.
There is no National Security Council that reports annually to Parliament on threats, readiness, and required reforms. There is no institutionalized risk mapping that integrates human intelligence with open-source intelligence to detect emerging threats. There is no systematic framework for the professionalization of security services that would ensure promotions are based on competence rather than political loyalty. The result is what Walton-Desir describes as a fundamentally reactive rather than proactive security posture. Guyana responds to crises after they occur rather than anticipating and preventing them. When a bombing happens, there is scrambling and investigation. What is lacking is the kind of anticipatory intelligence work and public awareness campaign that might have prevented the attack or at least limited its psychological impact.
“In the wake of these events,” she noted, referring to the previous attacks, “the government did not even commence a public education and awareness campaign. Instead, what they did was to take the police and law enforcement and activate them as weapons against the people.” At the heart of Guyana’s current vulnerability is a policy vacuum that should be filled by a comprehensive migration framework. The government has proposed an E-ID card system as a solution, but Walton-Desir is emphatic that this addresses symptoms rather than causes. “The problem stems from the lack of a migration policy,” she explained. “That is the first thing. There is no policy framework. Out of the policy framework will flow the legal and the organizational arrangements. To the extent that there is no policy framework to address this migration issue, it is like throwing stuff at the wall and hoping something sticks. That is not how you build a country. That is not how you govern.”
What would a proper migration policy look like? It would start with clear legal definitions of who is entitled to entry and under what circumstances. It would establish mandatory screening at all ports of entry, with fingerprinting and biometric registration. It would clearly distinguish between Venezuelans returning to Guyana with legitimate claims to citizenship by descent, economic migrants seeking temporary work authorization, and those whose presence poses security concerns. It would also address the profound challenge of Guyana’s porous western border with Venezuela. Despite having, for the first time in its history, the financial resources to implement comprehensive border security, the government has failed to deploy the necessary technology: drone surveillance, satellite monitoring, enhanced enforcement at legal ports of entry, and the immediate return of those who enter illegally, with requirements to enter through proper channels where screening can occur.
Instead, the government has created what Walton-Desir describes as a dependency trap. Migrant labor reportedly now comprises approximately 80 percent of the workforce on major public infrastructure projects. This has created a situation where implementing proper registration and screening protocols could disrupt the government’s ambitious infrastructure agenda, leading to policy paralysis. “They are in a quandary,” she said. “They are in a quandary because they are transactional, and they’re willing to sacrifice our national safety on the altar of political expediency.” Making matters worse, the government has gutted the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, allowing individuals to obtain late registration of birth and, by extension, Guyanese citizenship based on little more than a two-paragraph affidavit. This creates not just security vulnerabilities but opens the door to the kind of political manipulation that could threaten Guyana’s sovereignty without a single shot being fired.
Perhaps the most chilling scenario Walton-Desir outlined involves the potential loss of territory not through military aggression but through political processes that exploit Guyana’s lax citizenship and electoral frameworks. Imagine, she suggested, individuals who have fraudulently obtained Guyanese citizenship forming political organizations. These groups contest and win elections at the Neighborhood Democratic Council and Regional Democratic Council levels. Having established political legitimacy within the democratic system, they then begin advocating for autonomy or even independence. Self-determination movements emerge in regions they control. “Essequibo could be taken from us without one shot being fired,” she said, “and in such a case, there’s no protection to be had from the international community, because it’s not an act of war. It is not an act of war. It could be done politically.”
This, she insists, is not a far-fetched scenario. It is a predictable consequence of the holes in Guyana’s electoral system and citizenship verification processes. The international community, which might rally to Guyana’s defense against military aggression, would have no basis for intervening in what would appear to be an internal political matter unfolding through democratic processes. “We could look up and tomorrow be third and fourth class citizens in our own country,” Walton-Desir warned, “and it does not have to be like that, because there are models to be followed.”
One of the most frustrating aspects of Guyana’s current situation, Walton-Desir argues, is that it is entirely unnecessary. For the first time in the nation’s history, Guyana has the financial resources to implement world-class security infrastructure. Oil revenues provide unprecedented capacity to invest in border security, intelligence capabilities, professional security services, and comprehensive risk management systems. “We have the capacity, in terms of the resources, to be able to do it,” she said. “The problem that you have is that you have a government that is just so discriminatory. And I have no bones about saying this: they prefer political allegiance over competence.”
This preference for loyalty over competence, for political reliability over expertise, has made safety and security what Walton-Desir memorably described as “a casualty of myopia.” The competencies exist within Guyana’s population. The knowledge is available. International models can be adapted. But because those with the necessary expertise are not perceived as sufficiently politically loyal, they are sidelined. The result is that Guyana enters one of the most critical periods in its history, facing sophisticated transnational threats with the resources to address them but lacking the political will to deploy those resources effectively.
By their nature, hybrid threats are transnational. They require international cooperation, real-time intelligence sharing, and coordinated responses across borders. Guyana currently engages with Interpol, IMPACS, the Regional Security System, and bilateral partners including Venezuela, Brazil, and Suriname. But according to Walton-Desir, these relationships need to deepen from ad hoc consultations to ongoing, systematic collaboration. The obstacle, once again, is credibility. International law enforcement and intelligence agencies are understandably reluctant to share sensitive information with partners they perceive as compromised or politicized. When international bodies sanction senior Guyanese police officials, it sends a clear signal about the perceived integrity of the institution.
“Credibility is our passport,” Walton-Desir emphasized. “These international agencies frown, to some degree, to a large degree, on sharing information with law enforcement agencies or bodies that they don’t see as credible.” Building that credibility requires the same foundational work needed domestically: transparency, rule of law, depoliticization of security institutions, and consistent accountability. International collaboration, though international in scope, begins at home with establishing domestic legitimacy.
If the challenges Guyana faces are daunting, Walton-Desir’s message to citizens was one of empowerment: you are not powerless. National security cannot be solely the responsibility of government institutions. Every citizen, every community, every sector must contribute to national resilience. “We have to have what we call a whole of society approach,” she said. “Every citizen, every sector, every institution, has to combine to contribute to national resilience.” This begins with informed vigilance. Citizens need to understand their security environment without descending into paranoia. The government should launch a robust “See Something, Say Something” campaign to encourage people to report suspicious activity. Schools should teach children emergency response procedures, establish clear muster points, and conduct regular drills that go beyond fire safety.
Community policing structures should be re-established and strengthened. Regional Democratic Councils and Neighborhood Democratic Councils should integrate security and resilience into their mandates. Public figures should be deployed into communities and schools in a bipartisan manner to discuss security awareness. Critically, this heightened vigilance must not translate into discrimination against the Venezuelan migrant community. The vast majority are in Guyana legitimately, working hard to support themselves and send remittances to families in Venezuela. They are not the threat. The challenge is to maintain awareness of genuine security concerns while protecting the dignity and rights of innocent people who happen to share a nationality with those who pose threats.
“We’ve got to begin to be each other’s people,” Walton-Desir said, invoking a Guyanese tradition of community mutual aid that has eroded in recent decades. “We have to begin to police our communities. I did not say take the law into your own hands. It’s a difference.” Citizens also have a responsibility to demand fairness and refuse to normalize corruption or biased law enforcement. When people tolerate the partial application of laws, when they accept that enforcement depends on political affiliation, they are not just compromising their values, they are compromising their safety. “Strong institutions are a feature of national defense,” she emphasized. “It is a feature of national resilience. So we’ve got to begin to talk to our people about these things.”
What, then, is to be done? Throughout our conversation, Walton-Desir outlined a comprehensive reform agenda that addresses immediate vulnerabilities while building long-term structural resilience. The most urgent priority is to establish a functional National Security Council that coordinates military, police, and intelligence operations, reports annually to Parliament on threats and readiness, and establishes precise accountability mechanisms. This body must be depoliticized, with appointments based on competence rather than party loyalty. Equally critical is the development and implementation of a comprehensive migration policy, not just the E-ID card system, but a complete framework that includes legal definitions, screening protocols, biometric registration, and clear pathways for legitimate migrants while closing loopholes that allow security threats to exploit the system.
Border security infrastructure must be enhanced immediately through the deployment of drone and satellite surveillance along the western border, strengthened enforcement at legal ports of entry, and implementation of a policy of immediate return for those who enter illegally, requiring them to come through proper channels where screening can occur. A comprehensive public education and awareness campaign should be launched, including the “See Something, Say Something” initiative, security education in schools, establishment of emergency response protocols, and deployment of public figures into communities to discuss vigilance without promoting paranoia or discrimination.
Perhaps most fundamentally, the process of rebuilding public trust must begin. This requires transparency, including daily briefings on security developments. It requires acknowledging mistakes and demonstrating corrective action. It requires depoliticization of law enforcement and consistent application of law regardless of political affiliation. It requires engaging opposition parties in bipartisan security consultations. Beyond these immediate actions, Guyana needs medium-term structural reforms: developing that coherent national security doctrine that defines how agencies coordinate and interrelate, institutionalizing risk mapping so that threat assessment becomes ongoing rather than reactive, and modernizing the legal framework, including contemporary terrorism legislation that properly defines threats rather than being weaponized against protesters, and cyber crime laws focused on infrastructure protection rather than punishing political criticism.
Meaningful parliamentary oversight must be activated by ensuring the Security Sectoral Committee meets regularly, convening the Foreign Relations Committee on transnational threats, requiring bipartisan participation, and implementing transparent reporting mechanisms. Community policing structures must be strengthened, and RDCs and NDCs must be empowered with security functions, fostering what Walton-Desir calls a “whole of society approach” to resilience. Perhaps most challenging is the cultural transformation required. Guyana must shift from a reactive to a proactive security posture. It must elevate what Walton-Desir, quoting Rastafarian philosophy, calls “the mental,” moving from a backwater mentality to one appropriate for a nation at the center of regional attention and facing sophisticated threats.
This requires moving beyond political immaturity, where warnings are dismissed based on their source rather than their merit. It requires prioritizing national interest over partisan advantage. It requires understanding that ruling over rubble is not victory. Near the end of our conversation, Walton-Desir revealed something that added profound weight to everything she had said. She knew Soraya Born personally. The six-year-old child killed in the bombing had been to her constituency office on numerous occasions. She knew the mother.
“There’s no joy,” she said, her voice heavy. “I want to be clear, there’s no joy in ‘Oh, I told you so.’ I get no joy from it. This is an urgent call, a plea to Guyanese, irrespective of your political persuasion, that you have to wake up.” This is the human reality beneath the policy discussions and strategic analyses. A child who should have been playing, going to school, growing up is instead dead because systems failed, because warnings went unheeded. After all, political considerations were prioritized over security imperatives. Walton-Desir was careful to add that while Guyanese must wake up and be vigilant, they also “have the burden of not being paranoid to the degree that the hard-working Venezuelans who are simply here for dignity and to support themselves, are victimized in the process.”
It is a difficult balance to strike: maintaining awareness without succumbing to fear, demanding security without compromising humanity, protecting the nation without scapegoating the innocent. But it is a balance Guyana must find. As our conversation drew to a close, I found myself reflecting on Guyana’s situation. The country has, for the first time in its history, significant financial resources. It has capable people with expertise in security, intelligence, and policy development. It has international partners willing to cooperate. It has a population that, despite everything, wants to see its nation succeed.
What it lacks is political will and institutional trust. The government’s preference for political loyalty over competence, its weaponization of law enforcement, and its refusal to engage in genuine bipartisan dialogue on national security are choices, not inevitabilities. They can be changed, but only if there is acknowledgment that current approaches have failed and have left Guyana dangerously vulnerable. Walton-Desir expressed limited optimism about the current parliament’s willingness to make necessary changes. “I regret that I’m not optimistic about the 13th parliament,” she said. But she emphasized the importance of continued advocacy, of keeping these issues in public consciousness, of demanding that sectoral committees meet and that there be visible bipartisan engagement on security matters.
The stakes could not be higher. The gas station bombing is not just about one attack or even a series of attacks. It is about whether Guyana can rise to meet the sophisticated threats it faces at a moment when its emergence as a significant oil producer has made it both more valuable and more vulnerable. It is about whether political leaders will prioritize the nation over the party. It is about whether citizens will demand accountability and fairness even from governments they support. It is about whether Guyana will be a cautionary tale or a success story.
Models exist. Other nations have faced similar challenges and overcome them. But models require implementation, and implementation requires political courage. “It must not happen that we wake up as third and fourth-class citizens in our own country,” Walton-Desir said with fierce conviction. “As leaders, we have to have a stated position against our people being relegated to third and fourth class in our own country. It must not happen. It must not happen.” The question is whether enough people in power, those in opposition, and most importantly, ordinary citizens will hear that call and act on it before the next tragedy makes the current situation even more dire.
Soraya Bourne cannot be brought back. But her death can become a catalyst for the transformation Guyana desperately needs, or it can be just another tragedy in a series of preventable losses. The choice, as Walton-Desir made clear, is Guyana’s to make. But it is a choice that cannot be postponed much longer. The nation stands at a crossroads. One path leads to continued vulnerability and the potential for an existential crisis. The other requires problematic acknowledgments, painful reforms, and a commitment to placing national security above political advantage. Which path Guyana chooses will define not just this moment, but the nation’s future for generations to come.
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Dr. Terrence Richard Blackman is the founder of the Guyana Business Journal.
This essay is based on a live webinar conversation with Hon. Amanza Walton-Desir,
Member of Parliament, conducted on November 2, 2025.
Guyana Business Journal
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