The COVID virus or political vileness

Aug 27, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo is twisting himself into knots to sing along and dance to any tune that ExxonMobil plays. Though the essence of political leadership shamelessness, Jagdeo is not bothered about how much he comes across as a hired hand, how much he appears as a pawn, in the ambitions and machinations of ExxonMobil’s Country Head, Mr. Alistair Routledge, and the orders that flow from Texas. Instead of Jagdeo standing up for Guyana’s interests like some valiant knight on this country’s oil chessboard, he is content to be a feeble, naked pawn.

Matters have proceeded so far, gotten so ugly, that America’s ExxonMobil does not have the hard duty of justifying what it does here, or what more it is pressing to get from here. The disgraceful part of this increasingly nasty, dirty oil business is that Guyana’s Jagdeo is only too excited to run forward and sweep the ground in front of Mr. Routledge. Jagdeo is the one making the excuses for ExxonMobil; Jagdeo is the one running interference for ExxonMobil. Jagdeo is the one coming up with what does not exist to give ExxonMobil a free pass, one of his many favors that have an incestuous strain about them, with the oil blocks that it covets in the Stabroek block. The company is keen on further exploring the rich Stabroek block to unearth more of Guyana’s oil treasure, but it needs a little extra time. The mere mention of time was enough to send a surge of electricity through Jagdeo, drive him into furious action.

It has to do with the 20 percent of the 600 oil blocks that has to be handed back to Guyana by October of this year. Jagdeo fell over himself to come up with a reason for ExxonMobil to keep them for another year. According to Jagdeo, it was the long, paralyzing national shutdown caused by the COVID-19 virus. The pandemic effects necessitate extending ExxonMobil’s control and operations in the 120 oil blocks (20 percent) that the company has to relinquish to Guyana. In so doing, Jagdeo definitely gave new evidence of the lengths to which he will go to handover the riches of this country to ExxonMobil. For during the COVID-19 pandemic, ExxonMobil was granted exception upon exception through flights cleared to bring in men and materials to continue its work in Guyana’s oilfields uninterrupted. In his unseeming haste to fall at ExxonMobil’s feet, and kiss the dust on which the company’s big chiefs walk, Jagdeo messed all over himself. Said differently, Jagdeo came up with a dud for a justification for the one-year extension to ExxonMobil for the 120 blocks in question.

The approval for more time was given by former President Granger in July 2020, but with quarterly reviews to be part of the oversight to determine maintaining the extension, or cutting it short. Jagdeo apparently never cared to exploit that provision, and now harps about COVID-19 .

What is the relationship between the Government of Guyana and ExxonMobil that something like this pandemic pus is stuffed into the throats of Guyanese? Specifically, what is the nature of the relationship between the PPP/C Government’s Jagdeo and the men of ExxonMobil? What has the powerful and resourceful men of ExxonMobil, Mister Woods and Mister Routledge done to this Guyanese leader that he relinquishes his dignity and self-respect? Jagdeo could have come out in the open, faced citizens, and said that he concluded that this was the best decision because ExxonMobil is already there with huge footprints in the Stabroek block.

But that is not the way of the Vice President, who has his own standards about what is truthful and ethical. To claim that COVID-19 closed ExxonMobil to a virtual crawl is something that does not have any strong hold on truth, leadership accuracy, or leadership credibility. There is something rank about this extension of the oil blocks, as based on COVID-19 assertions. Most worryingly for Guyanese is that the odor emanates from the vicinity of Vice President Jagdeo. The oil blocks extension is not because of the pandemic, but because of political rankness. Next time, Mr. Jagdeo, think first, then talk. Better still, remember that truth always takes first place.

Bharrat Jagdeo, COVID, ExxonMobil, tune, Vice President

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