Oil Fund theft – over before it even started

Jan 23, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – It was always going to come to this inevitable conclusion. After all the agitating, arguing, and assuring, it was the edge of one seat in parliament, the advantage of one more vote in committee, and it was over before it started. It is all that is required, and everybody else could quarrel forever, and scream their lungs out to no avail. Access to the fund under legal cover, and draining it through legal provisions were the end game. Now it is in front of us, as the circumstances once feared, are now very real, in that it can and will happen. Thanks to the criminal mindset of Guyana’s leaders.
The visions and preparations for the wastage of the Natural Resource Fund (NRF) housed in a New York bank were in motion long before the elections were over, and the PPP/C took the reins of Government. At one time, the fact that the oil monies were deposited in a foreign financial institution, a New York one of immense standing no less, was cause for comfort for Guyanese. The settled belief was that dirty greedy, grubby politicians would have great difficulty getting their hands on it. They would have greater troubles explaining and justifying any actions that spoke of withdrawals. Well, all of that is now history and part of the wretched forlorn oil story with which this society must live. For endlessly cunning PPP/C leaders sat down, studied, and came up with a simplified mechanism to steal the oil monies under the umbrella of the law.
Just recently, we spoke of wastage of the NRF balances. It is being charitable, because as we all know when Guyanese politicians come close to big money, any money in material amounts, more than wastage is involved. Through and through, it has been and will continue to be the incomparable criminalities that citizens of this country have always known for decade upon decade. Wastage has its purposes, because monies can be withdrawn for billion-dollar projects that excite Guyanese, but which are the channels to siphon off much of those withdrawn funds, leaving us to speak again and again, but always futilely, about massive corruptions. The deeds would be done, and the monies gone, with nobody held accountable. Remember later when the depleted funds register that we at this paper said this publicly on this day.
Everything is in place, and very neatly. It has not been the smoothest going for the PPP/C Government with many loud, spirited, and furious objections from a significant cross-section of society. It didn’t matter then during the hasty passage of the NRF Bill now the law, and it is not going to matter now. The Government is already on the move with energy and determination to ram home its advantage (one seat) and have its way. It will, because this is what the numbers say, and it favours the government. Unlike the United States Senate where there is a similar precarious advantage for the Democrats, it is an ironclad guarantee that there will not be a single PPP/C defector, because of conscience or internal agitation. And unlike the APNU+AFC Coalition right here, there will again be not one, not one, departure from the ranks of the five-member PPP/C voting bloc in the Parliamentary Committee of Appointments, as did occur during the no confidence motion in late December 2019. PPP/C members live and die by one mantra: one for all and all for one, and nothing and no one interferes with that titanium structure.
When the Government has the numerical advantage, debates are meaningless, members might as well just cast their votes for and against, and let it be over, putting Guyanese out of their misery. There is no suspense, no mystery, for it is as plain as day that is where matters will boil down to, and always terminate. However examined, both the board and the investment committee are political creatures, which will follow through on the directives issuing from leaders. Their decision-making is done for them on a premeditated and prearranged basis. All that jargon about the role of the investment committee is just that – jargon, and nothing else. This is legalised thievery, and to be on an unprecedented scale.