Oil nationality driven by political unity and integrity

May 30, 2022 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I hear calls for national healing, and I welcome other voices and spirits. It is one that only a few Guyanese have made their calling, more of us, all of us must be about so and work diligently towards so. For if we don’t have the national healing that leads to national unity, then we have nothing. We may as well not have a drop of oil or all the good that it does for us. I present why.
The past few days the Liza-1 Permit renewal has come up for blizzards of comment; my two cents are there somewhere. In doing so, there is full appreciation for sacrosanct contracts, their inviolability. Additionally, this irrefutable fact stands: Guyana cannot ‘out lawyer’ Exxon. I don’t think also that this country can ‘out-politick’ it, starting with the Her Excellency (Ambassador) and continuing to 1600 Pennsylvania (White House). We may not have the courts of law looking upon our claims and contentions favourably, or the power to dictate our destiny. But what we have left is one thing and one thing only: the court of public opinion, the chamber of public pressure, the tribunal of the man in the street writ large. It is Guyana’s only asset, the spirit that could power national unity, the attitudes that energise national healing. But that we don’t have. There is no more infallible logic and sagaciousness than that state of being. This is why I say so.
Given our reactions to most things, large or small, any action against Exxon is frowned upon as an action against the PPP. This is notwithstanding the overwhelming understanding that moving against Exxon and cornering the company (insofar as practicable) can only be financially beneficial for this country. The few quality members of the local legal fraternity possess this instinctive anti-PPP conclusion, their related political complexion plus calculated monetary ambitions. If this is so of our eagles, it is why our doves and pigeons languish at ground level. Ditto those calling themselves financial analysts. Instead of for flag, it is what favours personally. To present differently, members of Guyana’s elites and intelligentsia, inclusive of fakes, pretenders, and the authentic, have sized up the local oil territory, and concluded that the best strategy is to prioritise what is good for themselves. To remind for emphasis, what does not outrage or discomforts the PPP. No cage rattling.
Editor, subtract those from the domestic stew, and Guyana is left with (politely) proletariat or peasants, the multitudes or the masses. Or to describe harshly, riffraff, bottom feeders, cannon fodder. But they are the ones that the Exxon(s) of the world fear. Their only recommendation is their number, and their energies and passions once marshalled and deployed well, meaning strategically and tactically. This brings us willingly, or screaming and spitting, back to national healing. For when we don’t have the fullness of our 780,000 selves, then Exxon and Hess have us by the proverbial chestnuts.
Consider: What may fail in the halls of justice would succeed in the street in exposing and excoriating Exxon for the predator and swindler that it is of the aspirations of a dreadfully poor people and place. A frenzied people can be a fearsome force. There would be the justice that comes from such. It is why we need to heal and mend, and as a fulltime pursuit, given grave illness. To overcome that Stability Clause, we first must be stable, as in together. Brother is not the enemy. Exxon doesn’t want that, prefers Guyana to remain as it is, free and fair and democracy and all. The ABCEU people know this, and when their sanctimonies are done about legal rights, there are human rights. Guyanese do not have it, not with that ironclad contract. Guyanese bear the brunt of its incomparable afflictions from the depredations of a handful of those same ABCEU’s own.
Editor, a partially healed and somewhat united people sufficiently incited (deliberately used instead of mobilised) would denounce Exxon universally and keep that harsh, remorseless searchlight on its Guyanese presence. What Exxon would be the object of the worst publicity, the more, the better for Guyana, if only to spotlight the rapacity (criminal capitalism) of its presence here. Outsiders could pay more attention to its flaring (and it doesn’t want that, regardless of volume); foreigners would probe as to what is really going on with fishing (and Exxon doesn’t want too much of that); Guyanese would hold its nose to the grindstone with public outrage a la 70s and 80s. But to be so and get there, we need national healing.
It is warming to read of callings for national healing, but it must an uninterrupted display of will, of stamina, of vision, and of the principles of what we really want as our destiny. Of course, that is if we really desire it. Divided we are picked off, utter fools; united, we stand a chance to go somewhere.

Sincerely,
GHK Lall

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