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Oil monies – all in the family

Oct 15, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Guyanese politicians in government after government cannot resist stealing millions upon millions from road building, school construction, public works projects, along with many other areas where huge amounts of the taxpayers’ money had to be spent.  What they didn’t steal, they squandered recklessly, and they always made sure that they had help just as crooked as themselves.  Bureaucrats at senior levels in the public service were put in those positions to ensure that the corruption machinery hummed without interference.  The few honest, ethical public servants in the system were either reassigned or removed from where they could see how things are operating and, therefore, raise alarms, objections.  All of this was before the coming of Guyana’s Oil Age.  It is a fabulously rich oil age overflowing with promise, but also one that is laced with the human-originated devastations that drain away most of what it could represent, if handled cleanly and correctly.

This is what an outsider is warning this country about, how it should be careful, what is has to do (“Guyana needs independent, int’l body monitoring oil funds to ensure transparent spending” -KN October 11).  Local commentators had taken earlier note, and spoken out, but were quickly brushed aside by the PPP/C Government and its battalion of self-serving assistants, who see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil on anything that the government does in its management of this oil, including the money that comes from it.  As the foreigner pointed out, almost all of the people overseeing this nation’s Oil Fund (NRF), providing advice about it, or are involved in some manner have some linkage to the ruling PPP/C Government.

We fully agree, and take this deeper.  For sure, a few of the names around Guyana’s NRF have impressive histories, and are recognized as such.  Regarding the others, the great majority, there are questions marks, and anxieties relative to whether these presences could ever do anything that is positive with this NRF.  That is, stand against the cleverness that is already at work with the precious cash inflows from this depleting oil asset.  Too many of them are too tied and too convulsed with fulfilling the objectives of the PPP/C Government that put them there, in many instances rewarded them.  There are doubts that they are made of the kind of stuff that compels them to take a stand for what is best for Guyana, that shenanigans are not afoot with the NRF.

This paper had warned before about the vagueness of withdrawing the oil money to fund “national development priorities.”  National development priorities are broad enough to mean nothing, and a clever political verbal construction to house any amount of wastage for self-enriching projects, and any kind of crookedness concocted by perverted politicians.  It is why they ensured that most of the people around the NRF are from inside the PPP/C circle.  It is an example of keeping all in the family, with all the likely political tricks condoned, all the smooth leadership cover-ups not mattering at all.

When Guyanese urgently need the highest level of integrity and accountability (transparency also) saturating every action of the NRF, they are given the equivalent of primarily party people.  Those of some strain of ethical calibre that is up in the air due to their being handpicked by a government scornful of any citizen who stand for truth and principle.  Those carefully and craftily selected are just about guaranteed to do the bidding of the PPP/C Government, or what they interpret to be pleasing to those who put their names up for consideration, to whom they owe their presence around the NRF.

For something like the NRF, Guyanese would only get truth, cleanliness, and justice with a truly independent, and a truly international group without the ties that bind to any government in this country.  Otherwise, it the same story of old skullduggeries operating under the not-so-new umbrella of “national development priorities” which were heard about before, and leave this nation where it has always been stuck.  The what, why, who, and how are all left unasked and, hence, unknown.  The PPPC Government made sure of that when they got their people around the enticing NRF.

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