Standing for Exxon is like standing with Maduro

Apr 12, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – I can understand PPP fanatics standing for Bharrat Jagdeo.  They worship him, owe him.  I can appreciate the tribalists and loyalists in the ruling party being inseparable from whatever the PPP Government is about. Regardless of the subjugation of their minds.  What is incomprehensible to me is how PPP diehards can stand for Exxon.  What it is doing to the promise of Guyanese.

How can any citizen, any person of principle, any man who calls himself a man still look favorably at Exxon, given what its purebreds Colonel Alistair Routledge and General Darren Woods are inflicting on the hopes of Guyanese, on the dignity of this country.  When Exxon does not deceive in attempts to brainwash locals, it hides from Guyanese what they need to know, would already know in a country that had stones as part of its geography, and with leaders to match.  We have heard of women wedded to women and of men doing the equivalent with their own gender, but who are these Guyanese fundamentalists for Exxon married to, if not the company’s interests and desires?  What is that marriage of the local and foreign all about, if not for some dirty money earned under the usual veil of secrecy?  I understand they are called community activists and media activists, carriers and wavers of the Exxon flag.

In colonial India, the maharajas and nawabs were pleased, felt honored, to bow before the British viceroys and to manifest publicly their homage to the Crown, their obedience to its agents.  In return, the maharajahs and nawabs were given the freedom to run their kingdoms like before, other than for outside relationships and defense, which the British arrogated to themselves.  A side benefit for the colonial masters was they got to maintain control of restless natives and obtained valuable local allies in their comprehensive plundering of India.  There is appreciation that PPP riffraff, the public ones that form the spearhead of its Thuggee battalion, due to their ignorance and blind obeisance to cult leaders.  But there is nothing but utter scorn for the educated and intellectual elite in the PPP, or those that are part of it in the outer rings. In contrast, I pity these men who know, or should know, what Exxon is doing to Guyanese aspirations, but who still willfully blindfold their eyes and stagnate their minds to stand in support of Exxon.  We need investment (and accompanying skills and technology) to cultivate and harvest the riches.  What we don’t need are new colonials who fold Guyana and its natural resource riches in their nuanced imperial calculations.  In such a case-and it is-then it would have been better for our ancestors not to have left India.  Why exchange up the road one set of enslavers for another brand of the same poison?  Since there is dogged resistance to standing up and fighting for a better Guyana, one bettered by its jewels, then there is no difference from those (except Baroda’s Gaekwad) who partnered with the likes of Curzon to keep the heel of the exploiters on the heads of their own.  There were the buttocks-kissing and filth-eating maharajahs and nawabs before in India, and we have their equivalents today in Guyana.  These mothers should be proud of themselves; they are when they surrender to the lures of Exxon.  This oil is more than dirty to the atmosphere, it create dirty and dirtier people wherever it is found.

Now, a parallel must be drawn.  When Guyanese yield their minds, surrender their courage, and submit their persons to standing for Exxon, then it is the same as standing for Maduro.  The Venezuelan covets Guyana’s wealth in land and natural gifts at the point of a sword; the Americans covet and carry away Guyana’s riches at the point of a pen.  Though there may be differences in approach and methodology, the visions and strategies coincide: the ultimate objective of both sets of people is to wrest this country’s endowments away from its people at the least cost.  We can talk ourselves blue in the face about the law of international relationships, and the obligations of contractual relationships.  But when both are distorted by the ambitiously crafty from foreign shores at the expense of Guyanese, then where is the distinction?  When the maniacal from Venezuela and the mangling from America can be partnered with by demented locals (leaders and their verbal stuntmen), what’s the difference?  The end games of the foreigners are just as lethally subversive to Guyana’s welfare, only the coversheets come in distinguishing colors.  Venezuela’s and Maduro’s are in red (what could be blood); America’s and Exxon’s are in green (what’s overflowingly prospering to their financials).

Guyanese who stand with Exxon’s Woods and his Guyana’s Attilaare about knowingly prostrating themselves to what is treacherous to the existence that is the due to all citizens.  The treachery is subtle and marginally sophisticated.  On the other hand, Venezuela and Maduro threats are crude and blatant, but their greediness to grab great chunks of Guyana’s destiny is on the same plane, inevitably leads to the same results.  Whether smooth Exxon (Routledge) or envenomed Venezuela (Maduro), Guyanese who stand with the former stand for the latter.  The consequences to Guyanese don’t have much to separate them.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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• Bharrat Jagdeo, Exxon, GHK Lall, hard truths, Maduro

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