The nation’s self-appointed leading oilman holds no aces, no winning cards

Feb 12, 2022 Letters

Dear Editor,

The Vice President of Guyana offers a fine lesson in what oil does to people, usually those leaders closest to it.

I look at him, and observe someone who thinks he walks on water, when all he succeeds in doing is shower himself with the sewage that flushes from this oil. It is what makes men lose their bearings, ultimately any soul they had.

The Vice President, Guyana’soil master, and the mastermind of what is suspicious about it. He, who was once powerful in his condemnation of what went wrong with it, is now exemplary in telling impotency, the lengths he goes to conceal his tracks, to shrink from the bright lights of oil truths that don’t add up, make no sense. Where he steamrolled opponents before, he now stonewalls. When a national leader, one in supreme command before, and still so today, is compelled to skulk towards the refuge of shadowy media agencies to get his messages across, that is the first troubling sign of things amiss. When he refuses to face the whole nation, and say this is the oil story, it is my story in the handling of it, the slippery slide down sinister precipices gains momentum. When he is fumbling and in mumbling retreat, he makes a spectacle of himself. It bares his torment for all the world to dissect, and to find him wanting. I call it recoiling from the dictates of ethical leadership, prudent stewardship of the people’s gifts. It is theirs, isn’t it?

There are still many opportunities for the Hon. Vice President to retrieve some precious lost ground. He must be open, be receptive to coming clean. He knows, and I know-all Guyana know-that the unclean visited this oil wealth from the first day. And with each passing day, and every new development today, the dreadfulness multiplies; we are now beyond salvaging. No leader of any substance can survive the disrepute that is now part of the unshakeable apparel that others have dressed him in, where he stands like a frozen plastic mannequin in the nation’s glass showcase. A figure of intrigue and every manner of speculation: what was done (or not), why some road taken, who holds the cards, and which ones have keys to the oil kingdom’s vaults.

I am absolutely sure that the Vice President is familiar with what I say, where I point him, for he is nobody’s fool. When he engages in these antics with others who are into what tricks, then a great disservice is inflicted upon the nation, from his own to the disowned. He may object; but some awful truths are nonnegotiable, and the nation’s self-appointed leading oilman holds no aces, no winning cards. If only Guyana’s Vice President were like Yamani or Pedro Gomez, maybe Al-Naimi, but that is not to be. So, we have what we have, which is knowing nothing, and expecting less. And all the while watching a leader twist himself into knots, swing aloft.

Sincerely,
GHK Lall

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