More lessons to be learnt

Dec 28, 2021 Editorial

Kaieteur News – It is our hope that people don’t have to lose their lives here, over the way this oil is being managed. Similarly, we harbour hopes that this suddenly oil-rich country does not have to lose many billions of American dollars in future revenues, through the emergence of contingent circumstances that require dollops of cash to cover consequences.
Last, as we study and draw parallels from the sector and elsewhere, we would not like to know that solid, hardworking servants of this country have to lose their daily bread, because they must be the ones who have to fill the role of scapegoats, due to the failures and crookedness of political leaders.
All the above came into being in the saga of the Boeing 737 Max airplane, and its catastrophes. It is a dark and dirty tale, which came to light in a revealing book by Peter Robison titled, Flying Blind, the 737 Max tragedy and the fall of Boeing.
Steve Coll is responsible for a tremendous work of authorship, which tells the long, up and down, story of another iconic American company. We recommend to all Guyanese Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power as a worthy read, and a compelling exercise in self-education, as to the ways of an American juggernaut.
But Robison’s Flying Blind, is the captivating retelling of the sordid lengths to which corporate powers would go to get their way, even when the obvious dangers could be a disaster in the making.
As skillfully excerpted by the New York Times in coverage dated December 1, a total of 346 persons lost their lives when two 737 Max crashed in quick succession. These were the first and costliest of the heavy human toll. Leaders at Boeing didn’t listen, which provides an eerie reminder of leaders in today’s PPP Government.
Boeing top dogs dumped people standing in their path with futile objections, as they threw caution to the winds and muscled their way forward recklessly. Again, that should also sound like much of what is going on here with how this oil wealth and prospect is overseen at the political level.
In the words of the New York Times and Peter Robison, “ultimate blame for the crashes lies with the highly paid executives, who waged a decades-long campaign to transform Boeing from a company, “once ruled by engineers who thumbed their noses at Wall Street” into “one of the most shareholder-friendly creatures of the market,” a company that “celebrated managers for cost cutting, co-opted regulators with heaps of money and pressured suppliers with Walmart-style tactics.”
Guyanese, who still possess the capacity to think, should pay close heed. For that is what Exxon has had one Guyanese leader after another, in different governments, deliver on its behalf. Exxon is reengineering its balance sheet, working its way to handsome profitability, and being the darling of both influential Wall Street watchers and heavy-duty shareholders interested in rich returns.
This is on the backs of poor Guyanese, with the help of compliant political leaders.
Several of Boeing’s bull-rushing CEOs neutralised the watchdog F.A.A with misleading narratives and got it to bow to the company. By now, Guyanese should be quick to connect the dots and make the conclusion. All they need to do is look at this country and its oil, and what Exxon has done with the collaboration of weakened and spineless leaders in today’s PPP Government, as our own pivotal watchdog is rendered sightless and speechless. Guyana’s watchdog is called the EPA, and we invite fellow citizens to look at it and listen to it first. Then, they should ask themselves how much confidence they have that what it has done could protect us.
Men have lost their heads, Guyana has lost billions, and more and more Guyanese have lost trust in those leaders who oversee the nation’s oil wealth, but are more interested in pandering to every wish of Exxon that has them in a chokehold.
Like Boeing’s leaders, the ones in Guyana collect their rich rewards, and pay no price for the damage already done, and what could be in store for us, like those doomed passengers on two flights using the flawed Boeing 737 Max aircrafts.

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