OP-ED: Love for President Ali, VP, and the American Caesar

Feb 24, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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 By GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – I publicly state where I stand with His Excellency, President Dr. Ali.  I love President Ali like a brother, the small brother that he is.  I could only have great love for Guyana’s President Ali if I were an Exxon director, Exxon manager, Exxon shareholder, Exxon worker, Exxon supplier.  After all the great things that he, President Ali, is doing that facilitate Exxon’s flourishing profitability, how could I (in one of those capacities) not have a love for the Guyanese leader, since it guarantees the future financial wellbeing of my dream of a company?

Though the love is not as powerfully emotional as Whitney Houston’s great love, it comes close. Just so all is on the table: I speak as someone who has an interest in Exxon; read however it pleases, I have disclosed.  And just so that no one should come to the conclusion that I am not extending the love and good feeling to that other great son of Guyana’s rich earth, the mighty VP, another smaller brother, nothing could be more distant from the truth.  The trials and troubles of a bigger brother, an older one, are endless, aren’t they, the things that have to be put up with, given a smoothing over, ever so often.

Though I loathe sharing this with the Guyanese public, I am duty bound to do so.  The love for President Ali and the Vice President stops there.  As a Guyanese I cannot love them as I should.  Not with what they are doing.  Not with how they are managing the great responsibilities given to them at this most crucial of times.  The time of oil.  Not with how they stand in stewardship of this national patrimony.  I look; I wait, for President Ali, and the Vice President, both men of known meanness and no mean honor, to take less of a stand for what accrues to Exxon’s benefit.  They are both now the most stalwart of dogged defenders for Exxon’s ambitions in Guyana.  England had Horatio Nelson at Trafalgar; the Romans had Publius Horatius at the bridge; and the Spartans their Leonidas at Thermopylae.

Guyana has President Ali manning Exxon’s bridge.  Nobody touches the contract.  Guyana has not one, but two courageous warriors standing guard at Exxon’s fortress: don’t even think of coming here and near to the Exxon contract.  It is inviolable.  It is the honorable thing to do.  Honor suddenly has a blackened face, a bad name, like it never had before.  Whose bridge are they defending?  Certainly, not that of Guyanese?

Douglas MacArthur wanted to nuke the upstart Red Chinese at the Yalu for daring to cross that unbreachable line.  Today, closing in on three quarters of a century later, Guyana’s President Ali and the Vice President continue to direct their verbal salvos and their cohort of ready snipers to blow apart any uppity Guyanese who articulates tinkering with Exxon’s golden child.  It is Guyana’s 2016 oil contract with Exxon.  It was a demon once for the PPP before and up to recent times.  But now all prior commitments, deceptions really, to renegotiating that contract, which humiliates country and every citizen, are now off totally off the table.  And if the PPP Government and its leaders would have their way, it would also be off the table of conversation.  In time to come, as in Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua, it could be a subversive activity to even speak about the suddenly angelic contract, much less insisting on its renegotiation.

Unsurprisingly, President Ali’s latest Solomonic stance is that to renegotiate would incur legal fees.  As sure as they would be hefty, we are losing multiples of the total legal fees due, from how Exxon makes rings around us, ties us into knots, and walks away with both what we know (contract provisions), and what we do not have a clue about (offshore developments).  My humble advice to His Excellency is that to do nothing is to lie down, rollover, and play dead.  Fine lot of leaders we have here in Guyana.

With leaders like His Excellency Ali, and the mighty VP, then the well-situated local viceroy, Mr. Alistair Routledge, could lean into his golf swing; check his handheld for the latest oil disputes from his Guyanese turncoats.  He can thank the Oil Gods; quietly incite both local leaders from his exclusive golf sanctuary: go get em boys; give ‘em hell.  Shut them up.  Show them who is boss.  The versatile Mr. Routledge has trained them well.  With close convenient friends like the President and the VP, he could care less about making an enemy of the Guyanese people.  Mr. Routledge doesn’t give a damn about holding the Guyanese people closer.  They could picket, they could protest, but all they would all be doing is putting their energies on the losing side.  Though some hard words may have been expressed today, it is tough love only.  What I owe the President, VP, Guyanese (and Mr. Routledge).

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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• Exxon director, Exxon manager, Exxon shareholder, His Excellency, President Dr. Ali

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