AG: I would never defend Exxon, so what is he doing

Apr 19, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – “ExxonMobil has a reputation; I would never defend ExxonMobil.”  So said Guyana’s Hon. Attorney General, Anil Nandlall, SC, MP etc., etc.  Something must have gone to Mr. Nandlall’s head, disturbed his equilibrium, his sense of optics, his connection to reality. To those, I would add his regard for the sacred nature of his duties, those to whom are due his first responsibilities.  It is not to the PPP Government, nor the artifices and maneuvers of the president and the vice president. Mr. Nandlall may have lost track of those who are his most vital clients, probably could care less about them due to their lack of commercial value.

But his first defence, and to his last breath, must be for the Guyanese people.  Mr. Nandlall may comfort himself and soothe what is left of his conscience and intellect, in his overweening pretense that he is not defending Exxon, when that is exactly what he is doing today.  Not in a private capacity, but in his high official, one as this nation’s chief marshal of the law, the first tribune standing in its defence. Regardless of odds. Regardless of the personal sacrifices that must be made. Notwithstanding the costs to the visions swirling in his head, which crowd out clear thinking and leave nothing but the piled detritus of his political hopes exposed.

To Mr. Mohabir Anil Nandlall, I offer a little prayer. Sir, no attorney general of any salted texture, any residual comprehending mind, would not be able to see and conclude very rapidly that to stand in appeal against a ruling of the High Court of Guyana, against what is to the benefit of the people of Guyana, against what is the protective that Guyana is not defending Exxon.

Standing against the interests of this country, Mr. Nandlall is defending the interests of the company.  Being in the forefront of the appeal against Guyanese people is defending the visions and calculations (and ambitions) of the people of Exxon.  Some names may help the AG overcome the fog that has eroded his thinking, laid him low. He is defending Darren Woods and Katryn Mikells and Alistair Routledge pockets.  However indirectly, regardless of how clandestinely, Guyana’s leading man of the law is defending what is best for those people and not what menaces the destiny of his own people.  If it cannot be said that what Mohabir Anil Nandlall, SC, MP (and to those I append X and Y and Z) is doing is not for the Guyanese people, then it is for somebody else (Exxon). If he is not for Guyanese, then he is against them.

There is appreciation that these assertions would be lost on Excellency Ali, hence I save my ink, nothing is sent his way.  In his uniquely rarefied way of thinking, the presidency is impervious to what he dismisses as noise, his job title is now degraded to a visa to some barren land where leadership duty has fled. Because VP Jagdeo is now consumed by the Exxon cause, I have long realised that he is a lost cause. The only defender of Exxon that undeniably outraces and outdoes the AG is this grand leader Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo.

With leaders of the rank of the esoteric Ali and the explosive Jagdeo standing immovably in Exxon’s corner, which Guyanese citizen needs defenders, despite the grievous harms inflicted?  And when an attorney general, a Guyanese attorney, a man operating so freely, so openly, so unconcernedly under this nation’s oil mushroom cloud could be so radioactive on behalf of Exxon, then one does not need the edification of any schooling.  Be it from nursery to tertiary, to understand the depths of his defending of a company like Exxon. Et tu, Anil?  How could you Mohabir, you who claim proud lineage to a storied warrior caste? Where is the fight in the AG? For Guyana, that is. When anyone anywhere can determine, please let me be the first to know.

In this country, there is a band of brothers in the PPP that deny this country.  One word for Exxon is one more dagger in the breast of every citizen.  I have never, ever, come across men of this remarkable pedigree in all the places I have been.  Many of darkly terrible presences have been encountered along the way, but this Guyana of ours is magnificently blessed (maybe, it is cursed) with the caliber of men and women that cannot hold their heads high in the fiercest national pride.  They are more content to place their face where Exxon directs them. Thus, the patrimony of the people has transformed into this spectacle where those given the power have converted it into kissing Exxon’s toilet apparatus.  There is a set of them in the PNC waiting to follow suit, should the moment come to pass. Rome had its history and share of assassins.  Man, look at those we have here.  And they are still brass-faced and boisterous enough to tell the world that they are defending the Guyanese people.  With fighters like these, what is there to fear from Venezuela and Maduro?

(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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• Anil Nandlall, ExxonMobil, Guyana, Hon Attorney General, MP, SC

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