Petroleum Commission – be careful

Apr 28, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

Hard Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – Many learned Guyanese have made repeated calls for a Petroleum Commission (PC) to come onboard and guide the oil sector forward.  A PC that functions independently would be a great boon to this country.  When that is the supreme vision-a national boon-then a PC would be the best thing that could happen to what has all the hallmarks of an American trillion-dollar prospect.  The people are the ones that will make the difference.  The people before it, the people in it, and the people that watch the people involved in it.  When the right people are in place, I am firmly for a PC that proves itself, gives Guyanese hope and pride.  If not, then the PC in place would be a farce, another joke at the expense of citizens.  Now, I proceed to state why I am where I am.

GHK Lall

People: I start with the ones behind the presence of a PC.  It is only one such person, really, a character with many known components.  Locals hunt for the finer ones; more often than not, almost always, they come up empty handed.  If the visions of the one with the steering wheel in his hand, foot on the pedal, are for the cleanest and clearest and richest to flow from the oil sector, then there will be a viable PC.  One in which Guyanese can place their confidence.  He will get the right Guyanese men and women, those where purity of purpose is paramount.

A decision maker of proven integrity would search tirelessly to deliver the proper people for this vital PC.  It is my unequivocal position that Guyanese do not have such a person, such an overseer, before (making the decisions for) the formation of a PC of stature.  If they did, they would not have the Public Procurement Commission, as constructed.  If they did, there would be a different set of stewards near the Natural Resources Fund.  If they had, the Madhia Commission of Inquiry would have done what was right by Guyanese, and not what accrued to their reputations, now speckled, strained.

In summary, and these three precedents-realities-in Guyanese life confirm what goes into the thinking of those responsible for their existence.  Who will do what makes the PPP Government look the best in a bad situation.  What will be delivered to shield PPP Government leadership and grant its leading performers insulation from public outcry.  Who will get the job done, any job regardless of its poor quality and derelict nature and have what it takes inside to absorb the scorn that follows.  Is this not what Guyanese have had, have lived with, have wrung their hands, and cursed at length about?  I sum this up: when Machiavellian minds monopolize the creation of the bodies identified, then what results is men with no minds to do what is demanded, expected of them.  More devoted fundamentalists are difficult to find.  Guyanese get what they get.  Just examine the PPC, the NRF itself and how it breathes, and that COI about a dormitory fire involving a score of fatalities.  If children can be sacrificed at the altar of political and leadership expediencies, then what about a trillion in US moolah?

I go deeper, this time focusing more keenly on the men and women that could be appointed to a PC if there is the quality of leadership just traced.  The foremost consideration is that they be honest and care about personal honor.  The next is that they must be of their own mind, where political patronage or leadership debts owed, as interpreted, are of no value, no meaning, and no standing to them.  The last is that they must know what they are doing, and to whom their first duty is due.  Do we have them in Guyana?  A few, definitely; many, highly unlikely.

To be straight and sharp: how many Guyanese of the caliber that is laid out here have been encountered in those selected to represent the people, be for the people, and only for the people?  Guyanese have lost on this score more times than they can count, care to remember.  On the formation of, and appointment to, the national PC, the outlook is rather dim, considering what has happened before.  What has been the norm is that the watchdogs themselves must be watched, and despite the people watching (and them knowing it), the outcomes of checks and balances, filters, and screens, have been revelations.  How the nation has been shortchanged first, and shafted next.  How citizens have been set up for a fall, and fall they do.  When the people responsible for putting people who think as trickily as them, are as of the same mind as them, then there is only one loser: I steer those who care to the sorry state of Guyanese men and women.  The disillusionment and the dismay that are now pervasive national characteristics.

The calls have been for a national Procurement Commission to be in place.  It is a justified one.  As to what kind of justice Guyanese would get out of it, that’s another story that they will regret.  Not may regret but will regret.  I am that certain.  The works that men do not live after them.  They live with them, define 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.)

• country, Guyanese, hallmarks, people, Petroleum Commission (PC)