Let’s bow low before Guyana’s President; the real one

Jun 02, 2023 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – It is time all Guyanese recognise where they are, what has happened to them. They must pay homage where homage is due. To the one national leader who matters, who dictates the temperature and texture of their lives. Sorry, it is not His Excellency, the Mighty President Ali. Regrets again, it is not the Almighty VP, Dr. Jagdeo. Believe me, it pains to put that out before the public. Whether liked or not, whether known or not (or anybody cares), the President of Guyana is Mr. Alistair Routledge, President of ExxonMobil Guyana and to this master all must kneel. Those who can’t kneel better prostrate themselves.

President Routledge has the citizenship that counts-oil citizenship. The same oil that empowers Exxon to reign majestically over Guyana and Guyanese. For the doubters, try this reason, and determine for selves, how irrefutable it is.  President Ali who had once spoken thunderously about oil is now as timid as a turtle existing on its back. How helpless and toothless (and voiceless) has His Excellency been?  Vice President Jagdeo, a former national leader of unequalled hostility and aggression against anything and any Guyanese that moved is now a modern Magellan.  My brother Bharat Jagdeo hastily and clumsily navigates around and away from oil.  Brother Bharat circumnavigates the oil globe and when he does return to Guyana (and earth) he has nothing to give to the Guyanese people when their oil patrimony tops the list of their interests.

Before President Routledge can gather his thoughts on some new sales pitch to mesmerize naïve Guyanese, could get his words lined up, Vice President Jagdeo jumps in front of the American Caesar, and says ‘let me do the heavy lifting, carry the bags.  Speaking for myself, I prefer not to have a drop of oil out there, rather than behold my brother, my Chief Oil Minister, my former head of state reduced to this ramshackle state.  I would like to include Mr. Routledge in my circle of brothers, but am fearful of being insulted.  I can hear the curse in Esso Guyana Land: ‘Brother?  I know not that man.’  If he is having a smooth day, there would be that contemptuous dismissal.  If, God forbid, President Routledge labours with the agony of a toothache, instead of ‘that man’ it would be safe to substitute ‘that dog.’  It is the prerogative of Presidents, and Mr. Routledge has been given those instruments by Messrs. (sorry, doctors) Ali and Jagdeo.  If anyone thinks that I am going to spare my other brother, Mr. Aubrey Norton, perish the thought.

Where is Mr. Norton, by the way?  When will he object to these accumulating barbarisms at the hands of Exxon and President Routledge?  What has gotten into the Opposition Leader that he is now the palest of pale shadows?  Who has whispered sweet romances in his ear?  What has taken over his head?  What stills his mind and his hands?  Direct those at President Routledge, not at me, sir.  Look at us today. Dr. Jagdeo holds tremendous sway over the Speaker of the National Assembly.  Nobody should need a seeing eye dog to hear (yes, hear) the sounds that come out of the Speaker.  Because he says nothing, we have no parliament of substance.  Because President Routledge has messaged Dr. Jagdeo on his expectations, we have the kind of parliament we have, and a gaggle of members to confirm the interpretations and conclusions about that house of the people.  I don’t wish to stain it further and say it is a ‘baad’ house, I simply say that it is not a good one.  The people lose again.  They always do, don’t they?  Thanks for nothing, President Routledge.  In sum, oil laws and oil regulations are what President Routledge instruct that they be.  For the pleasure of the skeptics and cynics, check out Guyana’s Environmental Protection Agency.  It is shakier, more suspect, and more porous than the Mazaruni Prison.

Oh, one more thing almost slipped by me.  It is the hallowed Constitution of Guyana.  I have good news for all Guyanese, who have long despised it with a passion.  The dreadful Burnham Constitution has now been replaced and superseded by President Routledge’s vaunted 2016 oil contract.  Forget that one from England’s King Richard about a horse for a kingdom, Guyana did better: it got a contract from King Alistair I for a constitution.  Whatever the Exxon contract promulgates, Guyanese subservient political leaders fumigate.

Guyanese had better get some sense, get real.  Whatever President Routledge says is what is in this country.  Return to Excellency Ali, VP Jagdeo, and OL Norton, and study them and check the result.  Who is the boss around here?  Who is calling the shots in Guyana?  Who most heavily influences whose interests and what takes precedence here?  Commanding precedence!  It is not any of those three luminous Guyanese I named.  Those who take patriotic objection can do so on Facebook, or whichever bastion of truth, democracy, and the Guyanese way to which they flee to take up asylum.  All rise!  All hail Alistair Routledge.  Goodbye, Mr. President, Mr. Exxon.  Me ain’t gat price…

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• GHK Lall, Guyana’s President

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