Guyana is now Exxon Guyana

Feb 23, 2022 Letters

Dear Editor,
It is the year 2022, but it might as well be 1952, for all that has changed, all that Guyana has progressed. In 1952, we were British Guiana and subservient to the Queen of England and her agents; in 2022, we are Exxon Guyana, and subject to the dictates, whims, and indenturing schemes of King Darren I and his handpicked governors calling the shots here.

Though 70 years have passed between when we were dominated by British visions and interests, and something called Independence occurred somewhere during this span, we are still an entity with a peculiarly staining identity. It is that we are once again, all over again, a colonised country.

Guyana is now Exxon Guyana, more and more as is evident daily, and not the master of its own house, not the controller of its own destiny. This is the colonising power of oil. Look around past the newer architecture in city and countryside; rollover the newer infrastructure, and there is a secret not so hidden because it is in plain sight, and painfully, insultingly so. Our own powerful leaders are pathetic bit players in the grand conversations of our significance, our present and future, our distant destiny. Cheddi Jagan’s power was restrained by the mighty arm of a resident Governor, whose influence extended into the corridors of decision-making, into all the nooks and crannies of this society’s existence. It didn’t matter whether it was the Legislature or the Chamber of Commerce, Premier Jagan was no more than a mere boy in his own backyard, though a grown man of considerable achievement and stature.

If anyone, any of these creatures that call themselves Guyanese, with an intact and unsullied mind still left seeks today’s confirming evidence, I encourage looking back as an honest, balanced, and unattached examiner at last week’s international oil gathering, and there it was in abundance; what the lawyers love to label a preponderance of it. But what we are yoked to as a people, and what we labour under as a nation, is not the bloodlessness of the clinically civil but the perpetuation of rank criminality against the dignity of the peoples of this country and their welfare. In that distinguished assembly, our leaders – President, Vice President and Prime Minister – were stripped of pretense and prompted to parrot what was pleasing to the oil mandarins who came, saw, listened, and conquered us all over again.

Like Caesars, they came and reduced our leaders to doormen, domestics and doormats in their own house. When our political princes should have dared to offend the delicate sensibilities of the tough oil men and speak of a fair oil deal for Guyanese, the best that could come of their minds (controlled) and mouths (muzzled and managed) were raw deals favouring the business needs and business prospects (“high risks”, “investments” and “merit”) of the congregated oil dignitaries. It was Cheddi Jagan all over again – his feebleness in the face of overwhelming odds, his futilities before overpowering circumstances. For a brief moment in time, there was a fleeting chance to roll up sleeves and bare arm and flex ownership muscle; prudent stewardship sinews displayed before all that we are serious, and we mean business not of the usual kind. But as one white man of Guyanese birth noted in the independent media, it was a conference of white men in suits calling the shots, which summarized sweetly and sharply what this was all about, and Guyana’s place in the servant’s quarters in its oil plantation.

They can’t, dare not, take a chance, and speak even of something as basic and protective as full insurance coverage. For that would cost Exxon America too many billions, and simply too much to squander on Third World natives, mainly coloured, from this part of the globe. It is Bhopal India again, and I want Guyanese and regionals to remember that one. This time, which I hope never comes, it is not Union Carbide, but a more reckless and dangerous monstrosity that operates under the name of Exxon.

We must also remember always how Guyana’s leaders played their assigned parts well; too well for Guyanese with a hint (not so much as a strain, just a mere hint) of the fierce fire of patriotic pride left. Now the stage is set, the table is readied, the chairs are arrayed. The placemats are just in the right spots. Those would represent the sum and substance of the men who call themselves leaders of this country, this Exxon Guyana. It is the tale and the terror of the colonizing power of oil, the Guyana chapter. In 1952, Cheddi Jagan was the Premier reconstructed into impotency. In 2022, it is his sickly spawns, President and Vice President, who relive the mantle of his shame made naked before the world. The difference is that he slugged and battled his way into exhaustion, while his descendants crumble before the first word, the first shot of struggling and fighting gets underway. We are a colony again, but this time our leaders love it.

Sincerely,

GHK Lall