Latest update November 7th, 2024 1:00 AM
Oct 13, 2024 Letters
Dear Editor,
Excellency Samuel A. A. Hinds is Guyanese nobility. Unlike the regular local and political riffraff, a comment is due on “Concerning Oil: may no one of us become like the steward who received one talent” (KN October 12) and “A good question would be whether we are getting more from our royalty and profit share than we would gotten from regular taxes” (SN Oct 12). Excellency Hinds is a former president, so I am duty bound to present my petition.
Thanks, ambassador, for caring enough to be involved still, for the courtesy of reading and sharing. Indeed, the biblical steward with the one talent was lazy and casual with his gift. Unwise and uncommitted to laborious toil that the new circumstances demanded. No differences there. Through my own scriptural offering, I remind Ambassador Hinds of the unnamed man who knew all the laws, requirements, but was lacking in one thing. He didn’t have the heart. He couldn’t bring himself to make the sacrifice. It is where we are, aren’t we, Excellency? There was all that was wrong with this Exxon product called a contract. Today, the only ones who have it wrong are those who plead to make it right. Those who never knew the word “sanctity” existed nor had any use for its significance, now embrace its inviolable tenets more than citizens like me. Go figure!
For sure, US$4.4B is a bonanza for a barren outpost like Guyana. But US$10B is even better. I will take US$8B, or even US$6B. Permit the personal, please: Ambassador Hinds’ portfolio includes working for Guyana’s interests. There is no time that he would have worked enough, be content enough, to relax and settle back on his velvet sofa. Have a chilled glass for me, sir. There is always another investor, another prospect, that could take Guyana to another height. Whether worker or union leader, whether prime minister or preacher, there is always one more step up the ladder to be essayed. Effort. Emoluments. Excellence. And eternity. A dying man still clings tenaciously to the last breath. It is where Guyana and the PPP and PNC should be with this contract, for more cash. Be it through more billions in royalty or taxes. At least, heralded ambassador, let us give a billion kilowatts of energy. Then, I would be satisfied, even if not one thin dime results. For then, it is back to the mental drawing board and seeking some way on how to regroup and restart.
Separately, Exxon told the Opposition PNC that the door is open, but not one syllable about renegotiation. There it was -absolute, concrete, and nonnegotiable about renegotiation. In the next breath, the same Exxon is similarly not budging over a miniscule US$214M in audit findings, but it now possesses the fluency of perspicacity and sagacity to discuss outside of arbitration what sort of interpretations (negotiations) could be had to whittle down that US$214M. Not to US$3M, as was so sharply executed before. But to something more palatable to its gargantuan income statement. The point is that Exxon is exercising its right to fight to the last blow for a paltry million or two. Why shouldn’t Guyana?
To Excellency Hinds, I say humbly: love of country and its people (patriotism) compel never to surrender sovereignty for the pottage of political ambition. And, if I may be indulged in the liberty of encircling Excellency Nicole D. Theriot on American duty in Guyana, and President Alistair Routledge, within the warm epistolary hospitality of Ambassador Hinds, what follows is unavoidable. If those Americans in the era of destiny beckoning during their Revolutionary days were complacent and contented, then the USA would still be under the yoke of the Union Jack and not the Stars and Stripes. They were subjects to the divine right of a monarch. Yet they were first and foremost men. It is all I ask of my brothers: Ali, Jagdeo, Nandlall, Norton, Hughes and, of course, big brother Samuel Hinds.
We may have “trouble” handling US$10B, no question. But the preference is for mangling and mismanaging to be at the hands of my own: An Indian or an African or an Amerindian or some agglomeration of all three. But not a Caucasian. Ambassador Hinds, preacher Hinds, embedded sacred texts in his writing, the favor is returned tenfold. To whom much is given, much is asked. Guyana has been given much. Messrs. Ali, Jagdeo, Nandlall, Norton, Hughes must rise to the moment, manifest how much they have, how much they have to give. I ask for the maximum. From them. From Ambassador Samuel Hinds. Most of all, from myself. Finally, Ambassador Hinds is in Washington, and though it is almost three score and five years later, there is a transcendence to the resonance of: ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. We have not even started to scratch the surface individually.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
Nov 07, 2024
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