Mr. Tucker dug deep, came up with dirt

Apr 17, 2023 News

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Kaieteur News – I believe that Mr. Timothy Tucker is a wonderful citizen, a well-meaning man, who allowed his emotions to take control of him.  I regret that he plunged deep, and came up with the dirty and nasty between his teeth.  To use a word like ‘lowlife’ in ordinary settings as premediated slur, calculated smear, against those found reprehensible because of their honest convictions is off the reservation.  To employ that frightful, spiteful, and vengeful pejorative is the equivalent of the decayed meat that a dog unknowingly, but happily, trots forward with in public.  Lowlife is to allow one’s less admirable impulses to get the better of us, and to run with grisly abandon.  To use it in the context that he did and for the weakening purpose that he did is on the far side.  The far, far side of beyond the beyond.

For when Mr. Timothy Tucker, a former chief of Guyana’s most regarded Chamber of Commerce could demean others like this for wanting more from something as vital as their oil patrimony, then much more is at work.  Lowlife for wanting a better contract for their oil, Mr. Tucker?  Lowlife for pressing for a fair contract with fair terms and conditions, Mr. Tucker?  I should be offended, all Guyanese should, including those collecting handsomely, but I have progressed past that stage, which is what I lay gently before my brother.

I am of the firmest conviction that Mr. Tucker knows better, is made of finer mettle, which makes his descent into this volcanic and vitriolic expression of lowlife all the more inexplicable, ragingly inextinguishable. Mr. Tucker may know, but he may not care, that more from their oil wealth means the difference between grinding poverty and some level of prosperity, regardless of how minimal such turns out to be.  With underpinnings like those, current passions over the 2016 contract could surpass today’s low temperature agitations, and spiral into full-blown convulsions.  Already Guyanese are privy to the signs of the first autumn of gathering discontent over oil, its management, and its yokes.

I could absorb that those calling for renegotiation of the venomous and vicious (it is both) 2016 oil contract with Exxon may be misguided, chasing straws, and investing their eggs in a bucket without bottom, possibly no supporting sides.  But lowlife is the bottom of the bottom, what no Guyanese could never be; or for which they should never be kicked about and spat upon in this manner.  Not over their calls on the oil deal.  As a businessman of some standing, likely high, Mr. Tucker has to be aware that the table of discussion is one of BBC-like existence and magnitude.  That is, the table is always open for business discussions on some new condition, some new development, some new anxiety.  In the business world, there is always jostling and jousting for an edge that could be grasped, any angle that could be had any difference-maker that should be pursued.  Knowing all of this, it is why it is so baffling, so unpalatable, that a man of Mr. Tucker’s local renown, and his growing international stature, was so comfortable resorting to the odious term of denunciation that he chose, with probable secret relish.  Mr. Tucker is advised to familiarize himself with what happened last week to a female KN journalist in the forefront with questions about renegotiation.  What could be more lowlife than what was meted out to her, sir?

Now, I take the liberty of informing my brother, Timothy Tucker, that due to where Guyana is now poised, where it is set to go, every domestic news development is followed with avid interest by those beyond our shores. It would be the foreigners, who have ecstatic ideas of prospering like they never did anywhere else with Guyana’s oil assets.  Because they were watching and reading, they could have picked up on his one-word missile that inflicted such a piercing stab, such a bludgeoning broadside, on the consciousness and conscience of his own fellow Guyanese citizens.  I could detect that a few of them would recoil in disbelief: if he could do that to his own, then what about others?  From the outside.  Or from across the bargaining table, when it is his own interests that are involved, or under stress.  What word could he be capable of using then, when thwarted, when disturbed?  What action?

It is of immense regret to me that this greatest of boons, these fabulous oil finds, have pitted Guyanese against Guyanese, and in the worst ways.  Mr. Tucker’s position is not an isolated instance.  There are those who proudly jump about and skip around, like delirious children, with their rich spreadsheets and grand narratives of how much the same oil deal they once cursed is now the best thing that could have ever happened to this country, given what Guyana is collecting.  Nowadays, there are these kinds of breathtaking citizens only too joyful to marinate and massage their figures and phrases to sing the songs of those who strip us naked.  Where Mr. Tucker was insulting, these guys are conning.  It would be interesting to see who next takes umbrage at calls for renegotiation of the contract, and the words with which they do so.  Dogmeat?  Local trash?  Road rodents, anyone?

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