Li’l street criminals and big white collar criminals

Oct 10, 2020 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

Kaieteur News – I touch upon the daily news, and it usually has coverage about young men caught and jailed. It is the regular fare of robbery on the street, burglary from property, and general robbery under an umbrella of crimes. The petty crooks on the corner are caught and punished, as they should rightly be, and for which a sigh of relief is breathed. But what about Guyana’s biggest crooks? Why the big fishes, the huge white-collar criminals, are not captured and made to pay for their billion-dollar crimes? Why do we refuse to breathe a thing about what is wrong and weakening for the peoples of this society, who have pinned so much on the promise of oil?
Our white-collar political criminals get away with more than robbing the nation; for while they do so, they get their gangs of fanatical followers to target, seek out, and wound anyone that dare to deliver a different thinking on our oil. Unthinking defenders of political leaders are just like those who aid and abet the motorcycle bandits, the motorized gunmen who commit and get away with murder. In similar fashion, our political leaders get away with the equivalent of murder, when one costly oil crime after another is pulled off secretly and successfully, through the conspiratorial contracts made with foreign partners. The oil companies have a long history of pulling off such financial coups and oil heists. Our oil thefts alone are in the likely tens of billions of U.S. dollars and no Guyanese is any the wiser, or is sufficiently exercised enough to want to say something and do something about what cheats and impoverishes all of us, except them and their crowd of self-enrichers. It seems as though very few citizens are concerned enough to want to know, to vent their anger at the thieves we have for leaders, who rob us of present and future, both us and our children. They are content with leaders, who paper over and polish with sweet words that are hollow and lacking in truths.
What our oil criminals are doing is tantamount to depreciating the promise of the present and future from every Guyanese, including from those who have no interest, those who have given up on anything positive on our oil, or about Guyana. Our politicians are breaking and entering into our homes and banks accounts that could be made possible by our oil wealth and draining both of everything. These are the leaders, in government after government, who stand in front of us and deceive us about the billions that they steal from us, which they did before in projects and budgets and gadgets that prospered themselves. Political leaders succeed because of the ethical midgets they surround themselves with, who jump to do their bidding. They get away with their many criminal exploits because they have done such a great job of dividing us. Where we have little interest in the truths about our rich oil blocks secreted away and given away. Where we have much patience and tolerance for those who rob us and our children of their rich prospects. And when we look close enough, it always results in whatever is concealed through crooked middlemen ending with a fat ownership share for Exxon. Why do Guyana’s dark and dirty oil matters always seem to channel to Exxon on every occasion? A sizable significant ownership interest here, there, and everywhere?
As Guyanese, we insistently and rightly punish our petty criminals, who terrorize our daily existence. Yet we unheedingly and wrongly resist and refuse any calls to get to the bottom of the oil corruptions of our political criminals. Still, we support and condone those same political sellouts, who lie to us endlessly about our oil and get away scot-free to boot. This is how the scales of justice weigh in this society. The lady is not blindfolded; she is just plain shortsighted, short of breath, and short of wisdom.

Sincerely,
GHK Lall

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