Latest update February 8th, 2025 5:56 AM
Kaieteur News-The 2025 budget debate is flushing government and opposition politicians out of their holes. Now that they sense that Guyanese fervently wish for renegotiation of the lopsided 2016 ExxonMobil-Guyana Production Sharing Agreement (PSA), local politicians are pointing fingers at each other. They are hurrying to shout down one another to get on the record as having the stronger position on renegotiation of the ExxonMobil PSA that devastates Guyana’s economic interests.
The parliamentary spectacles are about who promised what, who said less, who have sat on their hands, and who have played the usual politicians’ tricks with renegotiation of the vile PSA. Both the government and opposition sides are seeking to outdo the other with who has been louder in their condemnations of the PSA and who has been silently condoning it. Minister of Natural Resources, Vickram Bharrat was all about who has not used, never gone near to, the word renegotiation. He has rightly questioned the opposition’s commitment to renegotiation of the 2016 PSA (signed by it, and silent on it since), while it plays clever word games about where it stands.
Though Minister Bharrat is on solid grounds in flaying the opposition for its nebulous and self-protective renegotiation postures, he has left himself and his government exposed. What he has engaged in is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. The truth of the matter is there has been no greater criticizer than the PPPC when it was in opposition pre-August 2020, and in the early days of its return to being the Guyana Government. It is part of universal political culture that politicians remember what they want, and discard what has the potential to cause them great upheaval. The PPPC as a political party and as a government is better than most at hypocrisy and deviousness, when such suits its ambitions. Minister Bharrat conveniently forgot that it was his own leaders, President Irfaan Ali and Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, who vied for the title of champion condemner of the ExxonMobil 2016 PSA. They found nothing right with it, had every reason to rip it apart and walk all over it, which was done. It is a position from which we at this publication have been committed to more than most in Guyana, and from which we have never deviated.
While the government and opposition spar with the word renegotiation that could change the entire dynamics of their relationship with ExxonMobil, this paper has not blinked nor muzzled itself. The Coalition APNU+AFC was listless and voiceless on the contract that it executed, and today it sidesteps where it really stands with renegotiation. The mere mention of the word (renegotiation) has caused it to shift from foot to foot, while promising what it would do if elected to run the country. Like the way that the opposition is today, so is the PPPC Government. Both President Ali and Vice President Jagdeo don’t want to hear the word renegotiation uttered in their presence. The president resembles a deer in the headlights, when renegotiation comes up, and the vice president swings from limb to limb, as though he is doing his best imitation of some forest creature at home in the trees.
The reality is there are few Guyanese politicians, if any at all, who have come out strongly and unambiguously about renegotiation of the ExxonMobil PSA. None has had the guts to stake their political visions, their political future, on renegotiation of the PSA that drains Guyana so continuously and so damagingly. ExxonMobil collects most of the oil cash and boasts of Guyana being the biggest jewel in its crown. On the other hand, Guyana’s main political parties and their leading spokespeople lose control of their bowels when renegotiation is called for, needed by the citizens of this country.
A one-sided deal is a one-sided deal, and there are no two ways about that situation. Guyana is paying a heavy price for all the disadvantages embedded in the 2016 PSA that ExxonMobil used to strangle the hopes of Guyanese. All three major political parties, PPPC, PNCR, and AFC, should be speaking with one voice: renegotiate the 2016 oil contract. It must be renegotiated now, and nothing else will do.
(Renegotiation – the games politicians play)
Feb 08, 2025
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