H@rd Truths by GHK Lall – Governor General Routledge – Where were thou?

Aug 29, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

---

Kaieteur News – Calling for Mr. Routledge.  Has anybody seen Mr. Alistair Routledge, Guyana Country Head?  Has anybody heard a word from Governor General, Alistair Routledge, Exxon’s Viceroy in Guyana?  Not to worry, the man and the master of the domestic universe is still here, as he made himself conspicuous with government and foreign investment.  He knows how to pick his spots, make a grand reappearance.

Before anyone gets the idea that I dislike Mr. Routledge, please scrap the thought.  After all, he is a fellow American, and has the best intentions for Guyanese.  He has said so himself, and after all, like the Germans during the last Great War, he is just following orders.  Isn’t that right, sir?  Gouge as much, grab as much, as the Exxon oil contract gives carte blanche to do throughout Guyana.  This is nothing personal, simply business; and Anfuhrer Routledge should know this better than anyone else.  I continue.

Governor General Routledge now enjoys a rare luxury.  Thinking this over, it is not so rare in Third World countries, when sloppy, slippery, and sleazy politicians are clustered over, or around, their nation’s oil patrimony.  He nods and men in suits, who make syrupy speeches, get the equivalent of a cattle prod.  They spring into action to do his bidding, and this is even when it means that they wage war against their own Guyanese brethren.  Skeptics can check with the Hon. Attorney General for clarification on that same condition that is now chronic in this country.  Do not waste time to consult with Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, for Viceroy Routledge is his pharmacist: the American provides the medicine for Guyanese, and Dr. Jagdeo, being the good oil doctor that he is, is only too ecstatic to dispense the same to his fellow citizens.  No matter how bitter it is.  No matter how potentially lethal it may be, Dr. Jagdeo is all energy and vitality to follow the man’s unspoken orders.

Yes, that was read right: unspoken by Mr. Routledge it is.  Things have gotten so out of hand here in this coloured people paradise that the Yankee intruder (now the manifest representation of the Ugly American [sorry, sir]) that he does not even have to begin to say a single syllable, and Guyanese are jumping higher than Michael Jordan or Clyde ‘the Glide’ Drexler of NBA fame, to fulfill his wishes.  Great and endearing Guyanese of the caliber of Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, Dr. Anil Nandlall, and a host of others who fall in the category of witch doctors, have grown so skilled at reading the man from Exxon’s mind that they anticipate his unsaid wishes, his uttered orders, and his unmentioned visions.  In Guyana, it is just do “wah de massa waaant fuh get dun.”

Governor General Routledge on cabled directions from Texas wanted US$200 million knocked out from those audit findings by IHS-Markit, and it is done and gone.  Just like that, and just like that the documentation is found and presented at long last.  Exxon must be using the same printery as the Guyana Chronicle.  The things that can be manufactured for US$200 million are unending.  I have to get in this game, these productions of paper.  The findings were hanging so long, going back and forth, and suddenly, the missing paperwork turns up on Guyana’s doorstep.  No wonder the GRA has to move from that collapsible building.  It is inflated with all kinds of airballs, and “jumbies” that have paperwork to prove their existence.

Meanwhile, Mr. Raphael Trotman has challenged Dr. Jagdeo, Guyana’s oilman, medicine man, and man of business for Exxon, to do something about the criminality surrounding the Exxon contract.  I am all for that and would like to see Mr. Trotman, Mr. Granger, and Mr. Routledge properly dealt with, given that criminality was part of the contract’s execution, and it’s now crime-riddled existence.  Mr. Granger is exempted, and Mr. Routledge was not here as a signatory.  The problem is that to target Mr. Trotman means that the contract cannot stand.  Everybody knows that under contract law basics, mention criminality and there is no contract.  Matter over.

For Dr. Jagdeo’s part, he cannot bite down hard (recall any dentist’s chair), for then he would bite a sensitive part of Mr. Routledge’s anatomy.  Then it would be Mr. Routledge’s head on a platter, if he can’t keep restless Guyanese natives under full control.  Full control, it is by Herr Routledge.  Simply study casually Dr. Jagdeo, and there is the best example of a Guyanese who has lost all traction, lost every conviction, and lost any national vision.  Naturally, Dr. Jagdeo holds on for dear life to his ambitions, which is staying in power by any kowtowing and any slithering, so as to be in Exxon’s good graces.

It is why Don Routledge doesn’t have to be seen, nor has to be heard.  He has many Guyanese rolling over, brownnosing, and self-castrating to satisfy his every whim and caprice.  Master Routledge’s blink makes them slink to do whatever dirty job that Exxon has for them to inflict on Guyanese.  They do it all too well.  I think it is time that the oil carpetbaggers and local political scalawags are reconstructed.

(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.)

---

• GHK Lall, Governor General Routledge, Guyana, H@rd Truths, Mr. Alistair Routledge

---