We are acting like the richest people around

Aug 18, 2021 Editorial

Kaieteur News – What is good for poor people also is good for poor countries. Poor citizens usually have to skimp and squeeze every drop out of each hard-earned penny that comes their way. It should also be the same way for countries, namely, impoverished and struggling ones like Guyana. Not too long ago, in the dark pre-oil age, commentators from rich countries used to dismiss us as backward and suffering from appalling poverty. But here we are in Guyana today behaving as though we are richer than Bill Gates, are more prosperous than the combined wealth of Middle Eastern oil countries. We are poor, but behave as though we are richer than the richest around.
We don’t have any major oil money in our hands yet, but we are giving it away hand over fist, like children, who have no idea of what is the worth of a dollar that came the hard way. One of our Sunday headlines tells the story: “Guyana loses US$1 million daily in rental for 24 supply boats from Exxon…Pays US$43,000 more per boat, per day than Suriname, T&T” (KN August 15). If this was the reckless, spend thrift behaviour of brothers, or good friends, we would have held them and shook them like a doll. But this is a country of which we speak that is conducting its oil business like this and, we are sure that there are many Guyanese, who feel like doing the same to our irresponsible leaders, meaning, shaking some sense into them.

Just so that poor citizens, alongside educated Guyanese, understand how much is involved, we convert into Guyana dollars: it is over EIGHT MILLION GUYANA DOLLARS DAILY AND THAT IS FOR ONE BOAT ONLY. When the 24 boats are added up, that is almost G$200M daily, which means billions in overcharges on a weekly basis alone. This is not just leadership stupidity, this has to be leadership madness and leadership deviousness, of a kind not seen anywhere else; certainly not in Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago.

We think we have so much money that we give it away, which is what our leaders are doing with our money, prosperity, and future. It is not their money, but that which belongs to us, but is being given away to Exxon in this grossly barbaric fashion. What is wrong with our political leaders in government after government with this oil wealth of ours? What is really going with them, and in what they are doing with this oil of ours, this national treasure that is the property of all Guyanese?

When something as blatant as overpaying by US$43,000 per boat per day (G$8M per day for each boat), then there has to be more to it than we know. On the other hand, that can be attributed to careless error and honest mistake. Guyanese have to ask themselves these questions: who in their right minds makes such arrangements? Who here could be getting what from Exxon, through well-placed and trusted shadowy middlemen, via some still secret payback scheme? In other words, who is getting a cut of this boat action?

For regardless of how this is looked at, it flies in the face of all reason, or anything thing that could be used to justify what is one more oil crime committed against the peoples of this country, compliments of Exxon and leading Guyanese politicians. This can only be the work of fiendish and compromised men who don’t deserve to be leaders, or to be anywhere near the levers of power. While they engage in huge giveaways like these, and still bigger ones that are slowly coming to light, a great mass of citizens are struggling to get by, in the face of severe financial hardships that have been their lot for generations, and which are now made more unmanageable and unbearable by a wounding, devastating pandemic.
When our costs are this much, have no relation to reality or prices paid by our neighbours then, beyond a doubt, we are on the road, not to lasting prosperity, but to continuing hungering poverty. These are the leaders citizens vote for, who then turn right around and sell them out with things as inexplicable, even unimaginable, like this.

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