Guyana will be severely exploited by the Exxon deal

Sep 04, 2017 Sports

Dear Editor,
Based on that report, the IMF predicts that Guyana will earn $380M a year, in the first couple years…” Minister of Natural Resources, Raphel Trotman (Kaieteur News August 24, 2017). Editor, please be reminded that Guyana is only receiving 2% of what our oil will be sold for. So if Guyana is receiving say $400M a year, Exxon is receiving 98 times that amount, or $40 Billion, a year.
The very sad thing about Guyana is that we have never had good governance. Or maybe I should say it another way. The successive governments that we have had have severely crippled Guyana. And what compounds the frustration of objective Guyanese, is that only when a political ideologue is in the opposition, they agree with that statement. Guyanese has this blighted approach to our development that we can only speak truth to power when it is not “our part” that is “running things”.
Over the past 50 years, we had sat as a divided nation and literally watch as our political leaders decimate our country; especially using the self-inflicted racial divide. There is no way the PNC could have sat at the helm for 28 years and retard the progress of Guyana, if PNC supporters did not allow it. And conversely, there is no way that the PPP could have sat at the helm and raped our country for 23 years if their supporters did not allow it.
Now we have come to full circle and the possibility of the dreaded past being repeated is hover like an eliminated drone over this nation. Again, there seems to be no room for any dissenting or objective voice. It is as if one cannot support a particular party and at the very time hold that party accountable. Guyana is so stuck is a developmental morass that there seems to be zero correlation between politics and patriotism.
Guyana’s resources are being daily depleted. There resources are not renewable. Yet there seem to be such ambivalence on the part of all the governments to be forthright with the populace. It is as if these politicians know that they could do to the Guyanese what no other leaders, in democratic countries, could do to their people.
Imagine that ExxonMobil will make 98% more than the $380M crumbs that they will throw Guyana’s way and we don’t know how many years they will do that for. Every year we get $400M, Exxon will get $40 Billion. And yet the Guyanese people do not have any idea of how much Exxon plans to invest in Guyana’s oil. Neither do we know how long the contract is for. So we don’t know how much Guyana make as it relates to how much Exxon will make. And our current politicians, like the previous one they ousted, think that we don’t deserve any better.
So we are at a point where Guyana is likely to lose out on yet another deal. Another transaction where the country can be cruelly exploited. Like Skeldon! Like the Marriott! Like the Berbice Bridge! Like bad bauxite deals! And like all those previous investment, where the Guyanese people were again left in the dark. When will the “eye pass” end?
Dr. Vishnu Bandhu
Leader, URP

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