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Local leadership in shambles

Apr 05, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Approval of the Fourth Oil Project, Yellowtail, confirmed something beyond the shadow of a doubt. It is that the people we have for local leaders are a collective failure, a total national disgrace where the management of this oil wealth of ours is concerned. They puff themselves up about what they are going to do, and how much will achieve, with this country’s oil bonanza, and then they collapse in a heap, time and again. Like bloated pimps, the slightest challenge comes before them, and the air goes out of them, leaving them looking like pathetic mockeries of what true national leaders really are, fight to be.
Leaders in the PPP/C Government are proud to point to their political/party manifesto and identify one by one the promises that they have kept. The President makes much noise about what he has delivered, the Vice President seeks to convey the idea wherever he goes that he is the saviour of the Guyanese people, but both are guilty of the worst kind of deceptions. Because the things that they point to are small and of passing importance on a relative basis. Because, on a relative basis, the biggest component, the element with the most lasting meaning for the dreaming peoples of this struggling country, both leaders have been careful to tiptoe around, hedge around, and engage in one delaying tactic after another to deny the Guyanese people what is due to them. It is of more for their oil, our oil.
The PPP/C, the President, and the Vice President at one time or another, and in some form or the other, said that Guyana must get more for her oil. It was and remains the biggest thing in their political/elections manifesto. We mention it because party and leaders have made a living from pointing to selected lines and promises within it that have been fulfilled. But on the thickest line, the one loaded with the most meaning, as in more for Guyanese, they shy away from, they cowardly retreat. It was on renegotiation for this oil.
Leaders in today’s PPP/C Government did not have much credibility to begin with, now they have none left. Approval of the massive fourth oil project leaves them in rags. In fact, rags is giving them too much, being too sympathetic, since they have no clothes on, not a stitch. All of Guyana laugh at them, ridicule them, at the pathetic sight they have become. Their noses are stuck first to the big toe of the oil invaders, and then fixed to the backs of foreigners. The oil made Guyanese leaders do that to themselves, so much self-esteem they have left, so much standing they now possess.
One powerful leader made it a principle (even if he didn’t think of it so to himself) to highlight renegotiation of this nationally self-defeating oil contract as a work in progress, something of priority. When we are faced with the reality of the approval of the US$10B Yellowtail oil project then there are three sharp but reasonable questions that come to mind. First, what kind of leadership work was contemplated, what was meant by that? Second, where is the progress for locals (and not foreigners led by Exxon) on this oil renegotiation work? And third, how much of a priority has renegotiation been for the two top leaders in this country, when Exxon runs away with another quick victory surrendered? All this is while Guyanese who harboured hopes are left to lick their disappointments and wounds again.
The fourth oil project represented a crossroad. In its simplest form, we had to get more before we gave anything more. It had to be, and was, a national moment of testing, and we failed. The white man is laughing all the way to the bank, making sweet announcements to their investors, and engaging in frenzied private celebrations. On the other hand, the people with a vested interest in this oil, Guyanese, are wringing their hands, and moaning over their fate, the destiny that stare at, and which looks more dismal now.
In any other society, the failing Vice President would be history, a joke to be told and retold. He has just begun.

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