The Fungible Fandango

Dec 08, 2024 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

---

…Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News- Dennis Chabrol asked Bharrat Jagdeo a simple question and Jagdeo responded with acrobatics that could rival Cirque du Soleil—minus the charm and coordination. Chabrol wasn’t asking for the moon or even the stars. He wasn’t even asking for an audited ledger. No, he simply wanted to know why the government can’t outline how the funds from the Natural Resource Fund (NRF) are going to be used. Easy-peasy, right? Wrong.

What we got instead was 15 minutes of obfuscation, distraction, and enough verbal gymnastics to make a thesaurus blush. Jagdeo’s answer boiled down to this: “Funds are fungible.”

Now, I’ve heard some excuses in my time but this one takes the cake. “Funds are fungible” is like saying, “Water is wet.” Yes, Bharrat, we know. Money can be moved around. It’s not the answer to the question; it’s a statement of fact that doesn’t remotely address the issue.

Let’s talk about fungibility for a second because, apparently, it’s Jagdeo’s new favourite word. He said it with the conviction of a man who just discovered a big word and wanted to show off at a dinner party. Fungibility means that one unit of money is as good as another, interchangeable like socks or bad excuses. But here’s the thing: just because funds are fungible doesn’t mean they should be inscrutable.

Imagine if you asked your teenager what they’re going to do with their allowance and they said, “Money is fungible.” You’d be looking for the car keys to drive them to therapy—or, at the very least, revoke their spending privileges. Governments, last I checked, aren’t teenagers. They’re supposed to plan, budget, and, dare I say it, be accountable.

Jagdeo’s tap dance around this issue isn’t just evasive; it’s insulting. If the government had a medium- or long-term expenditure plan, as any responsible administration should, this wouldn’t even be a question. He could have said, “In 2024, we’re spending X% of the oil revenue on infrastructure, Y% on health, and Z% on education.” See? Not rocket science. I didn’t even break a sweat coming up with that example. But instead, we’re treated to a lecture on the liquidity of government revenues, as if that somehow absolves them of the need to explain themselves.

The Opposition, bless their skeptical hearts, is understandably concerned that the country’s oil wealth is going to vanish faster than the dessert tray at a wedding. They’re not asking for miracles; they’re asking for a plan. A roadmap. A post-it note, even. Something to show that the government has thought this through beyond, “Let’s wing it and see what happens.”

But let’s be honest: Jagdeo’s whole “shtick” here isn’t about economics or fungibility or even accountability. It’s about control. If the government outlines exactly how the NRF money will be spent, it opens itself up to scrutiny. And scrutiny is to this administration what garlic is to a vampire. They’d rather dance in circles, spewing jargon and platitudes, than give anyone a straight answer.

And let’s not ignore the irony here. This is the same government that spent years criticizing the previous administration for its handling of the oil sector. They promised transparency, accountability, and all the other buzzwords that sound great in a campaign speech. But now that they’re in the driver’s seat, they’re acting like they just discovered the oil money in the glove compartment and have no idea what to do with it.

Jagdeo’s claim that the Opposition is trying to create confusion is laughable. If anyone’s creating confusion, it’s him—with his long-winded, convoluted non-answers. Dennis Chabrol wasn’t trying to score political points; he was asking a question that any citizen of Guyana should be able to ask: What are you doing with our money? And instead of a straight answer, he got a verbal maze with no exit.

At the heart of this debacle is a troubling reality: the government doesn’t have a plan. Or if they do, they’re too afraid to share it because it might not hold up to public scrutiny. Either way, it’s a failure of leadership. Oil revenues are a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Guyana. They could transform the country, lift people out of poverty, and build a future that everyone can be proud of. But that won’t happen if the funds are squandered.

The fact that Jagdeo couldn’t—or wouldn’t— provide a straight answer to Chabrol’s question speaks volumes. So here we are, left with more questions than answers, more confusion than clarity, and more frustration than hope. Dennis Chabrol asked a simple question. Jagdeo could have given a simple answer. Instead, he chose to perform the Fungible Fandango, leaving us all wondering if this administration knows where it’s going—or if it’s just making it up as it goes along.

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

(The Fungible Fandango)

---

• "Water is wet, liquidity of government revenues, Natural Resource Fund, oil revenue, Peeping Tom

---