Return of oil blocks

Oct 13, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – The heat is being applied to the PPPC Government, and it is concentrated heavily on the feet of President Ali and Vice President Jagdeo. The heat is not from the burning intensity of the overhead sun, and all the sweating that it causes. The heat is from the ground in the form of Guyanese standing in front of the Office of the President and making their voices heard, and their unhappiness felt.

The PPPC Government, the President, and the Vice President with the nation’s great oil wealth in his hands, are all put on notice. Get more from ExxonMobil for the oil that is the property of the citizens of this country. Get in the face of ExxonMobil, and get those at the top of the company, like Darren Woods and Alistair Routledge, to understand that the Guyanese people are angry and they are impatient. They see and read about the many billions in American dollars that ExxonMobil is making from this nation’s patrimony, while their own struggles with living daily are under the severest distress. The people at ExxonMobil are playing golf and goofing off about doing anything for the people of Guyana, and so the rage is building, slowly building.

The PPPC Government may fool itself into the complacency of thinking that it is standing strong, but it is not. The people, including their own supporters, are tired and fed-up, sick to their stomachs, of being misled and deceived in a thousand different ways with their oil inheritance. The people in front of the Office of the President have been speaking via different placards that demand renegotiation of the cancerous 2016 ExxonMobil oil contract. Only schemers that are beastly could have come up with the barbarity that is a contract with provisions like that, and then turnaround and speak about its sanctity.

Neither President Ali nor Vice President Jagdeo at any time lets any development pass by that ruffles their fur the wrong way, and that shakes their rulership nest. The people protesting with placards are not about politics, they are fighting, upping the pressure on government and leaders, for their patrimony, a proper slice of it. It will not come from 2 percent royalty, and no ring-fencing, and no taxes paid by ExxonMobil. A better Guyana with more oil benefits for all Guyanese will only come about through an honest and meaningful renegotiation of the 2106 ExxonMobil contract.

Furthermore, a better Guyana will not be, if ExxonMobil is allowed to hold onto the 20 percent of the Stabroek Block that is due to be returned to Guyana by the end of this same October month. Better will be the lot of Guyanese when those 120 oil blocks (20 percent) are fully relinquished to Guyana come October 31^st, 2023, and not a day more. The more that Jagdeo hopscotches, the more that Jagdeo fandangoes, the more that Jagdeo backpedals and wheels around in circles, the more Guyanese are beginning to realize that he is not the man for the job of overseeing this nation’s wealth.

Frankly speaking, Vice President Jagdeo has been too protective of ExxonMobil, and too abusive to the increasing number of Guyanese, who have one objective in mind. It is that Jagdeo must redirect his energies and passions towards ExxonMobil to get more for Guyanese. Guyanese want their fair share of this wealth, and they do not want to hear anymore of these gimmicks, see anymore of these antics, from Jagdeo (and President Ali). The more they cloak themselves in what empowers ExxonMobil to rip-off this country, the more both of them expose themselves for who they really are.

The President and Vice President are clearly for ExxonMobil. And since this means that they have to misinform and then abandon the Guyanese people, then this is the choice that they have made. Their farces and pretenses are as bright as day, and Guyanese are tired of the betrayals they have had to live with, the costly disappointments that are now their daily reality. The protesters are not for a man or moment, but for a cause. Protests are for the present to be better, and the future to be rich, then richer, for all Guyanese.

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Editorial, Government, PPPC, President Ali, Vice President Jagdeo

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