Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo on Tuesday confirmed that the government will resume his regular press conferences after a five-month hiatus, returning to a format that for years served as the country’s most consistent public-accountability venue with the executive branch. Kaieteur News reported the commitment on May 12. The Vice President did not set a specific resumption date but indicated the format would return soon.
The hiatus mattered because of what the press conferences had become. Through 2024 and most of 2025, the Vice President’s weekly engagements with the working press functioned as the single most reliable forum in which government officials had to answer follow-up questions in real time, on the record, on a wide range of policy files — from oil revenue management to housing allocation to internal PPP/C politics. The format’s suspension in late 2025 was not formally explained at the time, and the gap correlated with several controversies that the government has preferred to address through written statements rather than open press engagement.
Restoring the press conferences will be tested against what they contain. A return to the format without follow-up questions, without engagement on uncomfortable files, or without the previous willingness to take questions from independent outlets would be a procedural restoration rather than a substantive one. The independent press will set its own standard for what counts as a real return.
Source: Kaieteur News, May 12, 2026.