President – national leader or national performer

Jan 21, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Intellect and wisdom, logic and reason, have all gone to the dogs in Guyana. It is insightful, endlessly fascinating, how Guyana’s President Ali has come to reflect this disastrous state of mind, how he stubbornly refuses even to acknowledge what is put before this nation by reputable, influential foreigners, where the management of our oil is concerned. Surely, this nation’s leader cannot be this shortsighted about his responsibilities. He cannot be this disconnected from reality that he rejects the helpful counsels, guiding hands, extended to us free of charge, and without any taint of the partisanship that poisons us.

We can overlook the President being forgetful, maybe even that he is possibly ungrateful. For the Commonwealth was there in 2020 during Guyana’s bitter elections season to boost his party’s position. If the Commonwealth could have been so constructive, so unbiased, and so helpful in a tortured time, then it follows that it is a presence that should be listened to keenly, because such would be beneficial to Guyana.

But here is Guyana’s President today making a production about specificity. The President needs a quote, regarding what the Commonwealth and the IMF said about managing our oil in more guarded manner, a better way. It is revealing that this oil wealth could transform national leaders that they can quibble like this; reduce themselves to this state, given what could be nationally devastating. For there was Guyana’s President insistent that he has to have a direct quote identifying Guyana, and only then he will respond.

This is remarkable when one considers that this Guyanese leader is nobody’s fool, nor can he be accused of obtuseness to the point that he blinds himself to the costly and dangerous excesses of foreign oil companies. The President has made it his practice to cultivate strong relationships with oil producing nations in the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and others in the UAE. Even if he did not know the full details before, it is almost a certainty that his Arab hosts would have been generous enough and helpful enough to share their own exploitative and punishing experiences with foreign oil companies, primarily American and British ones. At the very least, the oil producing Middle Eastern brotherhood would have cautioned him to be watchful where the foreign oil companies are concerned, and not to take anything on face value.

It is amazing to the point of shocking, therefore, that Guyana’s President relishes coming down impatiently and sharply on his own people trying to do an honest job while, on the other hand, he seemingly looks on, accepts, and embraces the foreign oil companies, ExxonMobil of all companies, as Guyana’s friend and one with the best interests of this country, with its highest priorities, in mind. Regardless of what the President’s doctoral dissertation may have been about, he has to have some acquaintance with the practices and perversities of oil companies, and how they have robbed and ripped-off poor Third World countries like Guyana. For the President to hold ExxonMobil to his bosom, and dismiss Guyanese (and entities like the Commonwealth and the IMF) as enemies of his visions emphasizes the rocky road on which both the President and his PPPC Government have embarked, and on which they are determined to stay, regardless of who says what, and the steep price for Guyanese.

This is at odds with what his leading brethren in the PPPC Government, which the President heads, had to say at one time about the ExxonMobil oil contract. The leading lights in the PPPC had called that same 2016 contract, as being among the worst of crimes. Logically, it means that the creators, movers, and executioners behind that contract are themselves criminal perpetrators. ExxonMobil holds pride of place in this category. Yet, these are the same people, this is the same company, that Guyana’s President runs interference for, protects and coddles. When he refuses to listen to what the IMF or Commonwealth has to offer, then he distances from being a sturdy national leader, and converts to the charade of a national performer, a troubling actor of a special kind. This is most helpful to ExxonMobil, but extremely dangerous for Guyana.

Commonwealth, Editorial, ExxonMobil, PPPC Government, President Ali

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President – national leader or national performer

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