Glenn Lall’s tax fight

Jun 18, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – A close listening to him confirms a few things. In the matter involving huge tax exemptions granted by the Government of Guyana to Exxon and its partners operating in Guyana’s oilfields, all he wants is for the fullest principles of fairness and what is just and equitable. It is his expectation in this tax case he has filed in the High Court. The vision is for Guyanese, already burdened by poverty and now struggling with soaring cost of living realities, to get some balance in its relationship with the oil companies spearheaded by Exxon. A start could be made with getting closer to this elusive balance in this tax case brought in State court.
Whether one likes Mr. Glenn Lall or doesn’t is irrelevant. The same holds regarding his strategies and methods of carrying the fight and throwing down the gauntlet before obstinate local leaders and Exxon’s big American chiefs, He has neither flinched nor wavered from confronting the oil companies and their cohort of fellow oil operators in Guyana, their armies of public relations people, legal experts, and already bought out and muzzled, if not neutralised, Guyanese professional and civil society elites. Certainly, it promises to be an uphill struggle, this tax case that he has filed, which looks like it is going to be the first of many of a similar or other kind. As one attorney has counseled, the court system must be utilised to the fullest to apply pressure to the Government of Guyana and its stubborn leaders, and the companies clustered around our oil and gas operations.
What is noteworthy, though it may have escaped the attention of many, is that there is nothing to be had for Lall himself in the tax case before the High Court. He has come to this point before the bar of justice to get justice for Guyana, not as a businessman, or as an owner of a newspaper and radio station, but as a citizen with all the rights and attributes that accrue to him from such. If only there were more citizens like him, the oil companies (and those local politicians that secretly conspire with them) would not only be taught a lesson that they would not forget, but they would be first to retreat in the face of the unending wrath of the Guyanese people directed at them.
As we at this publication present this, we are not ignorant of the fact that patriotism has beaten a hasty retreat before the commercialism, tribalism, opportunism, and vandalism that have all become nothing but central features of our oil wealth. In today’s circumstances, there is no consideration, no space, for the type of oil nationalism that would benefit immensely the citizens of this country. It should be noted that we speak not of oil nationalisation, but of a mentality that is front and center about the kind of oil nationalism that embraces a place for foreigners and locals, and each with his fair and square share of Guyana’s oil bonanza. It must cease being this one-sided, feet upward, face downward deal that condemns this nation to a destiny of continued chronic poverty for the many.
This is what Glenn Lall is boldly fighting for, and leading the charge against those refusing to see it his way and give way, They include the Guyana Government and the Exxon-led consortium of oil companies. We cannot continue to be satisfied with being among the richest people on earth on paper. We must not become complacent and be misled about having among the potentially highest GDP in the world, according to projections of experts. We have to put a stop to paying our fair share of taxes, while Exxon and its partners are the beneficiaries of massive tax exemptions that burden us still further.
If a citizen, any ordinary citizen, is barred from bringing his or her grievance before the tribunals of jurisprudence in the halls of justice, then who can do anything against incomparable governmental banditries? What, then, is left to the regular citizen, acting on his own, in efforts to seek redress and level the scales, and in furtherance of what is the sacred right of every citizen of Guyana?

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