H@rd Truths by GHK Lall – Donald Ramotar

Oct 15, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – It is time that the focus shifts to former president, Mr. Donald Ramotar.  Much has been said and written about the president’s overwrought reaction to Mr. Ramotar’s call for doing something about the 2106 Exxon contract; that has its relevance and place.  But the former president is due a closer look, a fair recognition, for what he put before the public in the wrapping of renegotiation.  Offensive and enraging, it has proven to be.

Why did Mr. Ramotar feel that he had to break silence now?  Why did this former president think it necessary to go against the grain, go his separate way on this Exxon contract now?  Why did this committed PPP loyalist say what he said now, when he had to know that a ton of bricks was going to be his reward?  I don’t know how well I will do with answers to these questions, but try I must.

Whatever he may be, Donald Ramotar knows about people, comes from the people, is of the people.  It is true that he is a party man, a political animal, through and through [which has not changed one iota], but he is also a thoroughly Guyanese man, beating Soviet heart notwithstanding.  The oil patrimony of the Guyanese people is their passport.  Not to the American Consulate for a visa, but for individual prospering, for national flourishing.  With the Exxon contract being where it is, there is merely the paltry for this country and its citizens.  Note that I keep saying the Exxon contract and not the Exxon-Guyana contract.  Where is the Guyana in it, when it is all Exxon, from its share to its secrets, which house more unofficial and highly profitable shares, in aggregate? Non-disclosure of key details now making sense, anybody?

Mr. Ramotar may be what he is, but he is nobody’s idiot.  He discerns dangers, two of them at a minimum.  The first clear, encroaching, and potent danger is to the People’s Progressive Party. Mr. Ramotar may be out of his high office, but it is extremely unlikely that he is out of touch, so put out to pasture he is.  He hears.  He sees.  He feels.  He senses.  He knows.  And he interprets.  The people are hurting and crying for help, which they know should be theirs, because there is all this talk about money and riches and who is on top of the world.  They question themselves: why am I and my family punishing?  Given all this talking, reporting about patrimony and profit and people getting rich (except me), why should I lift a finger on that date?  When the people reach this palpable loss of confidence in their own, the bells go off, and they are not stopping with their infernal dins.  A change to the Exxon contract could lower the volume.  It depends on the substance of the change: crumbs cannot replace crumbs, and be held aloft as genuine partnership.

The people don’t want to know the mechanics and dynamics of oil’s intricacies.  The people watch their leaders and want to know what they are doing about this contract that they themselves had cursed violently.  What has changed?  Who influenced whom in the PPP leadership tag team to this new dispensation about sanctity of contract?  Was that not considered before?  Or did it not matter before?  Whether so or not, like workers in any business, the people see the company making out like Midas, the management prospering, and both proudly boasting about business being very good.  Yet they [the people] can’t face sellers, creditors, neighbors, and fellow travelers.  This is not good for the PPP.  It may not mean anything for the PNC.  But it is bad for the PPP.

In good conscience, Mr. Ramotar came out of his self-imposed oil hibernation, and put the reasonable on the table. Change the contract.  It is the exact same thing that President Ali had stood for at one time, in more officious language.  What caused him to change his mind?  Power?  Retention of power?  I do not for a minute that what Mr. Ramotar did was altruistic.  It is what is pragmatic: for the PPP and its longevity, its visions of extended hegemony.  All it takes is three seats, maybe even two.  Maybe Exxon is going to circumvent that by sponsoring its own team.  If for cricket, why not on the biggest wicket for the richest ticket?

Separately, Mr. Ramotar looks at the Exxon contract, and he discerns what the PhD Excellency Ali should have already concluded.  The Exxon contract has neutered Guyana’s parliamentary assembly.  The Exxon contract has voided Guyana’s sovereignty.  The Exxon contract has castrated and performed a hysterectomy on Guyana’s presidency. Which national leader sitting in the highest chair that this land can offer, and still in a clean and ethically robust state of mind, would stand for this odious and repugnant legal construction?  Jesus Christ! Which Guyanese would ally with, advocate for, run interference alongside, and run rackets for, Exxon and this contract?  A monstrosity doesn’t have, cannot claim, sanctity.  A corporate barbarity, a commercial atrocity, can never pretend at sanctity.

This Exxon contract should be hurled by the Guyanese people to rot in hell.  So, too, the foreign people who crafted it, and the Guyanese people who back it.  Mr. Ramotar has shown us all what it is to be a proud, dignified Guyanese.

(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.)

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• GHK Lall, Mr. Donald Ramotar, Offensive, PPP, President

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