Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:53 AM
Nov 11, 2022 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column
By GHK Lall
Kaieteur News – Many times, we think we have heard everything and seen everything. I have been there, especially when the area that stands before is either the politics of Guyana, or the social environment of Guyana, involving fellow Guyanese. Things can be so interesting -a carefully chosen word. There should be keenness in noticing that the first focus is on Guyanese. Then, the startling came, and it was not from a Guyanese consumed by the regular narrow arc of thinking, but from a foreigner. A powerful and most influential foreigner, a fellow American, who jumped headlong into the local fray.
This is exactly what Exxon’s Guyana Country Head, the Right Honorable, Most Reverend, Omnipotent, Alistair Routledge did recently. Commander-in-Chief Routledge arrogated to himself sole control of the bridge of Guyana’s ship of state, the Golden Arrowhead, this Magnificent Province, and declared that the Wales Gas to Energy project (WGTE) is an indication of what is “right government” in Guyana. I was taken aback that the American Routledge would take it upon himself to engage in a little politicking, aka electioneering, on the side for the People’s Progressive Party. I have always talked about strange bedfellows, which now qualifies as deep understatement, since what Commander-in-Chief Routledge articulated confirms the closest, most intimate of incestuous relations between Exxon and the PPP.
If what the PPP is doing with this unsupported, mysterious, magical WGTE is about what is ‘right government’, then by default it follows that whatever the PNC or AFC (or possibly Article C or OWOC, and others to come) represents and has to offer on anything can only be what is nothing but WRONG GOVERNMENT. Now some thoughts and questions come rushing. I think that what Country Head (literally) Routledge voiced and where he went are totally off-limits. How can any Guyanese in his or her right mind not conclude that what Country Head Routledge did was nothing but the heights of internal meddling in Guyana’s business and Guyana’s politics, and in the rankest, most brazen manner? Country Commander Routledge should be given the clearest path to sell Exxon to Guyanese anywhere, but he must not dip his toe into the always sensitive-to-the-touch cauldron that is Guyana’s politics and Guyana’s governance, and which group is or is not the ‘right government.’ How do those two telling words ‘right government’ not amount to going where he has the sense not to, and uncaringly diving headfirst into what stirs the passions of Guyana at the merest flicker of a breath?
Mr. Routledge did not have to utter the actual words that the PPP is the right government for WGTE or the one to set the right environment for Guyana, but those can be inferred by the dumbest of the dumb around here. How can any Guyanese come to any other conclusion? What the Guyana Country Head ought to know by now is that numerous Guyanese are most unhappy with the leeway that the PPP Government has been giving to Exxon, or which has been seized by it, in its operations in our unbelievably rich oil sector. What PPP leaders have made possible for Exxon’s operations here is not leeway, but a freeway with no speed limit, no rules of the road, and neither brakes nor charges applying.
As references, there is Guyana’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has been all but eliminated from official existence, such is its obvious impotence and irrelevance. Imagine a reported single barrel oil spill, and close to two months later Guyanese are forced to be content with living in an information blackout on that matter. Right on the heels of that, we now await with bated breath, the conclusion and promised publication of the US$9B audit of expenses being executed by an audit team that does not inspire the required minimum level of confidence. Meanwhile, the PPP Government and its leaders have found a safe harbor in their customary silence on this one, as both usually do with issues that provoke disagreement. It is likely that by Alistair Routledge’s way of thinking, his frozen self-serving mindset, that these are outstanding subsets of what is ‘right Government’.
I have said it before, and I will say it again today, in the clearest of terms: this country is not being governed by the PPP or President Ali or the Vice President. It is run by Exxon and conquistadores and viceroys like Alistair Routledge. Without a doubt, for Country Head Routledge that is what is the ‘right government’ and nothing else. And the final thing for today is this. As unmentionable and unpalatable as the PPP Government, President and Vice President are, I would always prefer them first, and hands down, over an Exxon or any other that comes from some foreign conquering shore. Right Government, indeed! The bull and ball of this man is simply unbelievable.
Jagdeo giving Exxon 102 cent to collect 2 cent.
Apr 25, 2024
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