Guyana’s Coalition Opposition

Aug 14, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – The APNU+AFC Coalition Opposition has come in for a rain of blows from many local corners. Much of it represents the animosities still fresh in many of its schemes and manipulations in the 2020 elections season. Other than from its own loyal support base, the sentiments relative to the Opposition have covered the distance, and involved much mockery, disparaging and dismissive postures, as well as impatience with how it fills the bill on being the major political Opposition group in this country.

Truth be told, it must be recognised that a reasonable to considerable bit of the negatives heaped on the Coalition Opposition has been earned. The Coalition has come in for hammering on its sloth with important issues, its seeming lack of a comprehensive national vision, and its awkwardness when astuteness is called for by pressing domestic circumstances. One obvious uncertainty about the Coalition is where it really stands with this criminal oil contract that its own people signed with ExxonMobil in 2016 on behalf of Guyana. This has also attracted attention and comments unfavourable to the group.

Still, to present a fair picture, what has become clearer from recent developments is that the Coalition is on the move with new oil postures. Motions have been tabled in parliament, it has spearheaded the charge in a pitched battle in parliament over the passage of the Natural Resource Fund bill (now law), and it has been convincing that recent Permits for the Payara and Yellowtail projects offered leverage to extract more from ExxonMobil and its partners.

On the all-important issue of contract renegotiation, however, the Coalition leadership has been a study in ether silence or taking offense. The Coalition Opposition’s leadership has gone out of its way to register that it will not be rushed, nor will it be working with the timetable of others. The posture has been that there will come a time for such talk, but nobody has a clue of what is meant by this, when it would occur, and where it could lead.

We at this publication think that this is far from enough. What may have been acceptable on the more routine issues in this country has neither reception nor traction when oil is the subject under discussion. It cannot be when this frightening monster of an oil contract is the one matter that holds in the range of its possibilities. So much more could be done to benefit Guyanese, and lift them up from where they are trapped. We believe that the Coalition knows this as well as any Guyanese, but as to why there is the hesitation to make renegotiation of the oil contract the central pillar of its presence (and vision), is anybody’s guess. Whatever the determining factors for the Coalition’s hesitancy and seeming timidity on oil contract renegotiation, they do not accrue to the credit of its leadership, its strength, and its readiness to fight fiercely for Guyanese.

The very issues that the Coalition has made the centerpiece of its recent pressures and thrusts can be eased in some way, no matter how small, for its own support base first, and next extending outward to the wider areas of Guyana left out by this government. Corruption is definitely a powerfully evil presence in this country’s governance operations. More Guyanese are interested in knowing what corruptions have visited this oil wealth of ours, and who is benefiting and how. With more from this ugly oil contract, as renegotiated, public servants may be relieved from cutting corners or looking the other way (other forms of corruption) to see their way.

Furthermore, the equality that is compulsory to give democracy a chance would have a much higher probability of becoming reality, when there is more for Guyana that can only come from renegotiations of this horrendous oil contract with ExxonMobil. The Coalition must be alert so that it is not distracted, not swayed, not compromised, not part of any divisive plans of others. The Coalition has a duty to the Guyanese people, and it must manifest a greater willingness to rise to the challenge and throw down the gauntlet before anyone who stonewalls or pussyfoots in renegotiating this draining and punishing oil contract.

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Guyana’s Coalition Opposition

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