Guyana’s Opposition neutralised

Mar 24, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Guyana’s APNU+AFC Coalition Opposition has been forced to deal with perceptions that it is finding difficult to shake.
It has come in for a great deal of fire for its seeming lethargy, its weakness in failing to stand up to a steamrolling PPPC Government. Though it has been a shadow of its past self, the opposition insists that the reality is far different. The Opposition has now emphasised its continuing efforts in pushing for more probing on oil matters, and the steel walls it has encountered.
“Opposition being stonewalled -says Govt. blocking every Parliamentary scrutiny of oil issues” (KN March 21). From revisiting the record, it is clear that there is some substance to what the APNU+AFC opposition says that it has been compelled to contend with, where it is stuck. Currently, it is being stopped dead in its tracks whenever it pushes for some action relating to Guyana’s new oil and gas sector.
According to the KN article referenced, there is an oversight mechanism to scrutinise what takes place with this newfound oil wealth of ours. It consists of “two key Standing Committees of the House: the Parliamentary Sectoral Committee on Natural Resources and the Parliamentary Sectoral Committee on Economic Services.” These two well-placed committees, most timely ones, are there to serve as watchdogs over “government’s decisions and policies” as those relate to the ballooning oil sector.
What is revealing, and startlingly so, is that in over a year and a half, and with oil production increasing and gas flaring occurring, not a single decision or policy executed by the PPPC Government has come under the microscope of sharp scrutiny. Eighteen months is an eternity of doing nothing, given where Guyana is with this national bounty. Rather, there has been PPPC Government foot dragging through deliberately drawn-out discussions on agriculture. The irony is that the Vice President is moving full speed ahead with oil plans, but in parliament, oil matters move slower than snails, more sluggish than sloths.
It stands to reason that any sensible Guyanese would have believed that these two committees would be buzzing with oil business, humming with the sound of much parliamentary action. Except that they are not; it has been nothing doing with the Parliamentary Sectoral Committee on Natural Resources, not even one meeting, and absolutely nothing moving since September 1, 2020, when the 12th Parliament was opened for the business of the people.

Those committees might as well not be there, so irrelevant they have been made with oil, and to such a state of constructive nonexistence they have been condemned. Constructive nonexistence is appropriate because this is what serves the interests of Government and its leaders well. Since the two sensitive committees have not done anything of merit, nothing of any essence on oil, then it stands to reason that they are just there to use as window-dressing. So, what we have had all the while is all this public talking by the President and Vice President with what they (and only they) see fit to present, through sly, self-serving public relations about the nation’s oil wealth. Meanwhile, behind the scenes in the two pivotal parliamentary committees identified above, there is an Iron Curtain erected against any meaningful oil and gas question or discussion.
This is how the Opposition is frozen in place, through clever parliamentary tactics that do not benefit Guyanese. Regardless how fervent the Opposition’s spirit, how burning its energies, it is blocked and locked from progressing on matters of concern about oil. Be it through the arrangement of rotating chairmanship for the natural resource committee, or delaying tactics using agriculture to stonewall and arrest any oil interests or inquiries.
The parliamentary realities faced by the APNU+AFC Opposition regarding oil issues boil down to this: not here, not now, not ever. No! No! No! And that is the beginning and end of things raised about oil in parliament. It is the modus operandi of the PPP/C Government and its clever leaders. It is the settled modus vivendi (way of life) that its parliamentarians employ and pursue with vigour. It is without regard for how the sum of their stymieing, their cunning circumventing work, portrays them before a watching world.

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Guyana’s Opposition neutralised

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