A PPP Govt. propagandist – from ExxonMobil

Dec 01, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – “Delivering business opportunities, jobs for Guyanese because it takes time to generate revenues from the oil production and for the government to be able to take that investment in roads and hospitals and improved education, that’s coming. That excites me for the future but it’s not tangible today for people. What is tangible is can I have a job? Can I grow my company…?

If Guyanese thought that that was coming from Freedom House, and a Bharrat Jagdeo’s press conference, they could be forgiven. It definitely sounds like words that Jagdeo would use to market his government. It was not former president Jagdeo, but none other than ExxonMobil Guyana’s President, Mr. Alistair Routledge. What a marketer, what a propagandizer, the PPP/C Government has in its corner, selling its cosmetics and brightly coloured balloons. But President Routledge was not quite done, for he still had this left to say in his recent press appearance: “Any international bench-marking would say that it’s tremendous progress.”

No doubt that Mr. Routledge is a keen student, for there he was doing in Guyana, what Guyanese in the PPP/C has made a fine living doing. That is, being the best at propaganda. In ExxonMobil, the government and Jagdeo have the kind of partner that is dreamed of, one that is on the ramshackle side when benefits to the people are involved. ExxonMobil did not rise to the top of the oil world by being seekers and tellers of pure truth; it has its own versions of that standard. ExxonMobil does its research well, studies its own people better, and then chooses the best. In its Guyana President, Mr. Routledge, ExxonMobil took the greatest care to ensure that it has the best salesman in this country. There he was selling the company to the natives. It could also be said that, given his own choice of words, Mr. Routledge is the paid top public relations officer, the paid chief lobbyist, and the paid lead propagandist, for the PPP/C Government and the ruling party’s General Secretary Jagdeo. For when Mr. Routledge opens his mouth, Guyana is paying in some way for his every word from its oil dollars.

Three sets of words from Mr. Routledge’s first quotation above give him away. The first is “it takes time to generate revenues”, the second is “that’s coming” and the third is it “excites me for the future.” We said that ExxonMobil is world-class smart, and that Mr. Routledge is a super salesman, and he proved it himself in his tricky efforts via the local media. We direct the attention of Guyanese to Mr. Routledge’s emphases: “time” and “coming” and “future.” The kind of returns that this country should be enjoying now is reengineered, with Guyanese being setup for tomorrow. We invite all Guyanese to listen to Jagdeo and Routledge to hear for themselves how the two of them sound like a duet in a chorus. They are both singing the same song, and in sweet harmony.

It was Jagdeo who spoke at one of his recent conferences about ‘foregoing revenues now’ so as to ‘maximize profits later.’ Clearly, they are both saying the same thing, using different catch phrases. The question is whether Jagdeo is parroting what Routledge wrote for him, or Routledge is lip-synching what is in Jagdeo’s songbook. ExxonMobil Guyana is telling Guyanese to be patient, for their future is rosy, but while doing so, the company is forcing its banks to build new vaults now, because its Guyana’s profits are so plentiful at present. Guyanese should remember that old saying: “bellyful man tell hungry-belly man to bear he chafe.” Today, many Guyanese are living in poverty, but ExxonMobil is celebrating prosperity. Guyana’s oil is helping ExxonMobil to prosper, but the company (Routledge) is telling the starving in this nation, don’t worry, all citizens will be richer later.

The history of oil companies is always that oil producing countries and their people will come out on top later. It is never sooner, but always later. When there are weak and pitiful leaders like Jagdeo in the clutches of an ExxonMobil, then an artist like Alistair Routledge is free to draw his comic book pictures, deliver his cheap, self-enriching propaganda.

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Bharrat Jagdeo, Editorial, ExxonMobil, Guyanese, Press Conference

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