Guyanese stirring angrily

Dec 29, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Guyanese are getting the message, and they don’t like it. ExxonMobil went too far with its billboard, now many Guyanese feel insulted. In trying to squeeze the hands of Guyanese with its golden handshake of royalty and profits, ExxonMobil overstepped and riled up Guyanese, who were previously silent and complacent.

It is good to see Guyanese getting out of their shells, speaking out for themselves. More citizens must also get out of their comfort zones and get in the face of ExxonMobil and its messengers, and let them hear the anger and disgust in their voices. Guyanese must get in the face of ExxonMobil using all the tools and channels at their disposal. It could be any social media platform, it could be the letter columns in the media, it could be through radio shows, TV programmes, and when they gather together at their places of work, communities, outlets for social leisure. Let the messengers and defenders of what ExxonMobil is doing hear, and those putting their own sweet spins on them, hear the sharp discontents of those who have lived in poverty for generations, and look on this national oil patrimony to fulfill their hopes, the way out of their tough circumstances.

Guyanese must reject the slick messages that ExxonMobil put in public. It must not matter who the messengers of ExxonMobil are, be they Guyanese or American- be they those who are powerful and protective of ExxonMobil’s interests. Or be they those who, due to their nearness to, and getting a piece of the riches, cheer the vile deeds that ExxonMobil did to Guyana. ExxonMobil did so to all Guyanese, through the Coalition APNU+AFC weaknesses and failures. ExxonMobil does so again today because of the spinelessness, believed comprised nature of the PPPC Government that allows it to do what it pleases, even if the degrading is part of the picture. The development involving billboards qualifies as such a scheme, such a picture.

It is an ugly electronic one, which shares a few things that make the American company look good (royalties, profits), while excluding other mult-imillion dollar things (bills, damage to sectors and waters) that drain and devastate domestic dreams. Guyanese must keep on making their voices heard, so that the world could get the true picture, and the full story, of how ExxonMobil has been the most covetous, the most rapacious, of modern-day plunderers of Guyana’s wealth. If Guyanese do not step up now, and speak out now, then there is no telling, likely no limit, of how far ExxonMobil, with the full cooperation of a feeble PPPC Government, will push its freedoms to mislead the peoples of this nation.

Let ExxonMobil hear, Guyanese, that it must be a more honest partner, what it must do to be recognized and accepted as a trusted presence in Guyana. The company must stop putting out propaganda. It must put more money on the table for the Guyanese people. Instead of spending money, and wasting time, to make fools of Guyanese, all that the people at ExxonMobil has to do, is to free up their purse strings. This is so that all Guyanese can get to appreciate that there is oil, that they are the owners, and that they are benefiting tangibly from their wealth. ExxonMobil has to be pushed to come clean.

Let this reality be faced. ExxonMobil will not be moved by reasoning and appeal. History has demonstrated time and again that Conquerors and Usurpers, and Cheaters and Hustlers, know only one language, respond to that only. It is pressure, sustained pressure, that what they believe is acceptable is dismissed out of contention, with the message of billboards being first in line. This is no matter how self-serving and acceptable those are to the Master Hucksters and Sellers of tricks and cons in their efforts, to pull the wool over the eyes of Guyanese. Enough is enough, and it past the hour when ExxonMobil should be made to sense and feel the unmoving positions of those who are cheated, who know that this is what is happening to them, at the hands of ExxonMobil. There is this billboard concoction from the minds of its people here and abroad.