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Tax giveaway to ExxonMobil and Bharrat Jagdeo

Nov 15, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Chris Ram, Chartered Accountant and attorney-at-law, let the cat out of the bag.  It is a big one, involving what came up in the National Assembly, and makes the then Opposition PPP/C look very bad.  In the scheme of things, the man who looks the worst is the then Leader of the Opposition, Bharat Jagdeo.  The issue is the oil contract between Guyana and ExxonMobil in general and more specifically, the tax giveaway(s).

According to Mr. Ram’s reading of former Minister of Natural Resources, Raphael Trotman’s book From Destiny to Prosperity, the PPP/C (now in government) is also on the hook for being a party to the tax giveaway.  Though guardedly revealing, Trotman’s book noted that the Opposition PPP/C was in parliament, and Bharat Jagdeo was right there, when the tax giveaway came up for debate.  Most conspicuously, nothing in the form of an objection came up from either the party or its leader, Jagdeo.  This does not look good for the PPP/C or Mr. Jagdeo who now stands as the de facto head of the same oil sector, and who have had so much to say about the 2016 oil contract, almost all bad.

According to Jagdeo in a recent press conference, it did not matter what the Opposition PPP/C had done back then, for the ruling APNU+AFC Coalition government had already signed the contract, so it was a done deal.  It is a point worth repeating, and as represented by Jagdeo himself: regardless of what the PPP/C said or did, it was of no consequence, as the deal was already sealed months before, plus the Coalition had the majority.

When looked at charitably, this appears reasonable on the face of it.  However, when examined in the context of all that the PPP/C and its leader Jagdeo said and postured when in opposition, and with more of the same since returning to the seat of power, the contradictions run deep. First, Jagdeo is neither the leader nor the kind of man, who lets anything passes that would give him a political edge.  Second, and along the same lines, he does not spare any occasion to stick it to political opponents, especially when he has them dead in his sights.  Third, he and his party’s silence in parliament where an objection to the tax giveaway was concerned reeks of the suspicious, if not the nefarious and scandalous.  And last, his excuse about a deal long sealed making any action on the part of himself or his group moot is also limp and lame.  On this tax giveaway, as pinpointed by Trotman first, and then Chris Ram, Jagdeo has been caught with his pants down.  There is no safe harbour in which he can seek shelter on this tax issue.  He was there, and with no objections recorded, it was as good as saying he was for it.

Moreover, the history of the PPP/C as a parliamentary opposition is a rich one, and the one from 2015 to 2019-20 confirms how no stone was ever left unturned to get its messages across, which leaves a long trail of evidence in the record.  In all of this Jagdeo was in the thick of parliamentary battles.  He has there for walkouts, he was there when placards came out to greet then President Granger, he was there when a volume of boos and catcalls were employed to drown Granger out, and he has expounded for the Hansard, among many other parliamentary moves.  Said differently, Jagdeo is a master of the local parliamentary game.  He is not one to leave the record astonishingly bare on something as huge as the Coalition tax giveaway to ExxonMobil.  It is not the Jagdeo that Guyana knows, not when there was so much political hay to be gained.

In not raising any objection in parliament for the record, that was as good as being fully for the tax giveaway(s).  In not raising any parliamentary objection to the tax giveaway when he could and should have, Jagdeo puts to shame everything that he and his PPP/C has said and stood for on this most exposing issue. The more Jagdeo tries to untie himself on this, the more he entangles himself.

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