GuyOil – the kind of people throughout Guyana’s Government structure

Apr 30, 2021 Letters

---

DEAR EDITOR,

There are several storms that are battering the state-run GuyOil currently. Revealing storms involving a whole heap of the people’s money. Polluting storms encircling some of the people put in charge of overseeing the business of Guyana. And the storms that are of opportunists well positioned to hurt the hopes of Guyanese and who use their politically backed presences to do just so.
I share with my fellow Guyanese how this takes place in this country, how men conduct themselves, who rewards them and how they go from there.
There had to be steady, visible presences at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, GECOM and Ashmin’s, from March to August 2020. They were. They had to have given considerable money or logistical support to collect benefits later. They have. Look at mostly who are on the boards of state agencies, who selected them and who everybody knows operates how…. When the rare honest man, a conscientious citizen, or a patriotic Guyanese is found among them, there is cause for celebrating. Out of some 200 of these presences, there may (may) be five such persons, far from double digits.
In addition to physical presence and financial backing, there were other assorted frauds, hypocrites, devils in disguise, damsels in distress and hustlers, who recognised that to be in the good graces of the powers that matter (there is only one), they had to lend loud moral support. They did. Even when their souls had to be sold. I call them the fallen angels of Guyana’s electoral system, disappointments to the fools that trusted them and voted for them; these calling themselves patriots and change agents. Look at them now and how they line up at the national trough to guzzle the silver. What we have in our bosom is a large pack of money-grubbing mercenaries. They are not foreigners.
I challenge my fellow citizens to think of this: Tarquinii and Caesar had their Brutus, Jesus his Judas and England its Oliver Cromwell. Today, Guyana has its sleazy agents and political scoundrels, old-timers, newcomers and wannabees.
Going further and higher, I challenge Guyanese to digest this: look at our leaders across the board and question yourself of this about them: do they possess a fundamental integrity on the basic issues? The bread-and-butter issues of managing the people’s monies? The kind of trustworthy leadership needed for oil, gold and the treasure house of natural resources? Look at the choices made from the slate of comrades for heads of this and that, chair and directors of here and there and ask again: who are these people (selectors and selected) and surely that better could have been done? That there had to be men and women of brighter lights and higher ethics than these who have little to none of either?
For sure, it is the right and the standard that the winners have the plums, but not those plumbers. I ask again: the majority of these board members, parliamentary presences, ministry seniors and agency chiefs cannot be the best plumbers that we have in Guyana? Or the best of anything related to ethics and integrity? I damn myself, if I were ever to think so, though it is extremely difficult to think otherwise. Not with the total repugnance that comes from the words, postures, and deeds of those who pilot the ship of state. They can’t even talk straight, share a straight story, on anything related to oil. Or anything period.
Examine the curiosity that our leaders have become: on the issues that matter (money), the problems that plague (governance): they are contradictory. They are dilatory. They are about individual and collective obscenity. But these are the people making the decisions. In Guyana’s instance, the fish doesn’t rot from the head. Rather, the leadership fish rots everything everywhere. More pointedly, I come at citizens again: anyone that openly counts drug lords or money launderers or serial stalkers and predators as respected friends and partners, stand up. Stand up right now and say to the world that this one or that one will be entrusted with family or business. Or both.
Yet that is precisely what is done with many people named stewards, most of the people put in places, where they can conspire and capitalise. GuyOil will fade soon enough. Tomorrow, it will be GUY (whatever). And the day following GUY (wherever). In my mind, these carefully selected rogues are put where they will deliver returns. As in any corporate division: provide a profit. For that cascades upwards, where the chiefs take the cream and credits. This is governance in Guyana. Correction: it is PPP style governance.
The coalition people were cheap: gold bands and gold jewellery. The PPP honchos pillage whole industries, as a way of life. They would steal the dentures of grandparents, so that they can’t eat bread. Then they will sell that bread to the highest bidder. And the biggest tragedy of all is that there is not an opposition worth its salt to breathe down the neck of an utterly corrupt government and its leaders every step of the way. This is the sum of the governance structure in Guyana today. GuyOil stands.

Sincerely,
GHK Lall

---

---