Political leadership indifference

Nov 22, 2024 Editorial, News

…Editorial

Kaieteur News- The main political leaders in Guyana behave as though oil is the last thing on their mind. It is the last subject that they seek to address, this great national wealth. Only when tough questions are placed before them, and not to answer, would leave them looking suspicious, do they say something.

Conspicuously, what the leaders in the PPPC Government and the leading PNCR Opposition have to offer on oil ranges from indifference to uneasiness to something bordering on palpable fear. When they do talk about the nation’s oil, the lasting impression that Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo and Leader of the Opposition Aubrey Norton leave is of men on the run, as if some great danger is hanging over their heads.

Both of these national leaders prefer to make themselves small when the issue is about oil. The priority of both is to be nowhere around oil, as if it is some ticking timebomb about to explode.

Guyanese have voted for them, put them where they are today. Citizens expect Mr. Jagdeo and Mr. Norton to stand up and fight for them, not dig holes in which to bury themselves. In a country with many gifts, this oil gift to Guyanese is among the biggest and richest that has ever been given to a people. Governments and groups prove themselves on how they plan to manage it, in what they actually do when the opportunity is theirs.

Leaders and their advisers, standout when their visions crackle with what extracts, would fight for, the best benefits for the true owners of the oil wealth, every man, woman, and child of Guyanese heritage. Yet now that the oil is here, with all doubts long extinguished, Jagdeo and Norton prefer to be left alone, to be receptive to talk about anything and everything else other than oil.

We at this paper think that that is more than indifference of the rankest sort. For Jagdeo and Norton, have condemned themselves into being thought of as being prone to gross negligence. They have neglected their duty to Guyanese, while not caring how pathetic they come across when they do so. The record is that when Jagdeo was Opposition Leader, he was a man on fire whenever oil entered the discussion. It is either that ExxonMobil has found some method to freeze him into a mummy, as is evident from his stiff inaction on oil. Or that all his big talk when he was wearing the Opposition Leader’s cap were flawed in origins and probably deceptive in objectives. Promised Guyanese the moon and stars, but then plaster them with mud and filth. At times, and based on his body language and his utterances, it seems as though both have become second skins. The problem is that his bruises show distinctively.

For his part, Norton is most comfortable when he is circling around oil issues, sharing answers that are comical in themselves, and putting as much distance as possible between him and oil. More and more, the sense is that Jagdeo and Norton have gotten themselves into some corporate bind, from which they cannot separate themselves.

So, they hide behind words or put up a wall. Norton doesn’t want to hear or speak about renegotiation, while Jagdeo stands as a great example of what represents dereliction of office. Where Jagdeo tries to bluff his way (a feature of President Ali’s normal oil leadership), Norton is more at home splitting hairs and fencing himself into a corner. Further, one of Jagdeo’s sickest tricks has been volleys of abuse at the independent media and citizen-objectors, while Norton hedges and beats around the bush.

Indifference is not the word that captures the substance of Jagdeo and Norton. Self-imposed impotence is closer to their individual reality, now that the huge demands of courageous oil leadership is what Guyanese need most urgently. Jagdeo and Norton now find themselves sandwiched in an unforgiving pincer. There is ExxonMobil on one side, then there are the rising expectations of Guyanese. ExxonMobil is sure to like where these two Guyanese leaders are stuck. The same, however, is the worst place for them to be before Guyanese. Indifference is out, cowardliness is in, and in trumps.

(Political leadership indifference)

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Political leadership indifference

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