H@rd Truths by GHK Lall – Discovering the real Bharrat Jagdeo

Aug 27, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

Kaieteur News – Guyanese are getting a greater and greater sense of what Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo is all about. He is so nervous these days, so much on edge, that the merest touch prompts him to burst out into a shrill exhibition of petulance and churlishness, which is usually followed by his characteristic virulence and viciousness. What Guyanese are seeing is a man on the ropes, one who is forced to resort to any desperate ruse, any shaky rabbit-out-of-the-hat trick, to extricate himself from the holes in which he thought that he had hidden himself. For these things, he must be called out, for these tricky moves, he must be placed on the national billboard, so that all can see for themselves what kind of leader he is, and what kind of leadership is bad for this country.

GHK Lall

Inquire of Dr. Jagdeo about oil blocks and he comes up with his own long block of words that is full of slipperiness and sleekness. The COVID-19 pandemic compels a one-year extension to Exxon, delaying its relinquishment of 120 oil blocks to October 2024. To avoid repeating prior writings, I skim over the following: during the pandemic mining and petroleum related ops were identified as “essential”; Exxon also had waivers for flights and other matters linked to its enterprise; and there was the quarterly review provision to adjust accordingly in former President Granger’s approval letter dated July 24, 2020. In aggregate, Exxon was as close as could be in operating without restriction, without inhibition, during the height of the viral onslaughts. Nothing had stood in the way or stopped Exxon: not the pandemic. Not the powers in the then Coalition government. Not anything implemented by the Coalition Government, all of which were unceremoniously undone and kicked by the incoming PPP Government into the garbage can. And not any red light activated to slowdown Exxon by this power-sensitive PPP Government. But the sly as a centipede, Dr. Jagdeo says it was COVID-19.

Ask this uneasy and unprecedented political operator (and an increasingly unconvincing one, as his confirm) about interest rate(s) paid on loans arranged by Exxon for Guyana, and Dr. Jagdeo goes into overdrive. For when a straight and simple answer would put the matter to rest, the Vice President settles for a seminar on loans, and how the hostile fossil fuel environment is making it more difficult for oil companies to borrow. All of that is nice for a conversation over a chilled cocktail, but what Guyanese need is a number. The wily (tornado) Jagdeo knows that, but he is not parting with any number for thy kingdom come. I use the little sobriquet of ‘tornado’ for brother Jagdeo, because in America, there is a word that is substituted for tornado, which is ‘twister.’ Though Elvis Pressley he is not, but twister fits Dr. Jagdeo to a tee, for it is what he has transformed himself into to please omnipotent Exxon. The man, the leader, spins around like a funnel gyrating on its edged end, one subject to the forces of Exxon that pushes his buttons, pulls his strings. The twister in the Vice President is what comes out when the issue before him is the interest rate that Guyana is paying Exxon for monies it borrows against the oil collateral, or its own equity capital that the company invests here. But why, is my question, that the usually talkative and authoritative Vice President so tongue-tied? But why, sir, when all that is called for is a figure (a digit) and not about any figure of speech that has become so painful for him?

Brother Jagdeo is into everything: Local Government Elections (but not oil); Chinese Landing and gold mining (but not oil); national security, Roger Luncheon’s final farewell, (but not oil). Dr. Jagdeo put himself in charge of oil, then positioned himself to concoct one camouflage after another in his management of the oil. In America’s Deep South, the slave masters had King Cotton to feather their nests. In Guyana, the foreign slave masters have Dr. Jagdeo as their King of Crude in his futile attempts to beat all Guyanese into submission. For Exxon, Dr. Jagdeo is delighted to be a bad man and a bullyboy. It is what weakens him, and has him lash out when he cannot come up with clean and coherent answers. Like all swaggering bullies-in their own minds, or by their actions-friar Jagdeo convulses into fits when Guyanese get in his face, and squeeze him to put up his dukes, or move out of the way. As his Foreign Secretary once said: put up or shut up. But there is Dr. Jagdeo, still deciding which is better.

Considering the shabby and sickly record that the Vice President has compiled with his stewardship of this national oil patrimony, he should not even show up anymore. From the little I hear, he has become like a boat captain caught in a vortex that sucks him further in, the more he opens his mouth. I have gone to great lengths to offer brother Jagdeo, and all who would listen, this one infallible medicine that works on every occasion: truth floats all boats. Oil boats and leadership boats and media boats. My brother, the Hon. Vice President of Guyana’s Oil Empire, does well to remember that, and make it his bosom companion, inseparable shadow.

(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.)