AG Nandlall – a kind profile

Jun 07, 2024 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – Guyana’s Attorney General, Mr. Mohabir Anil Nandlall, SC, MP, has a lot in his head and much in his hands.  He could go a long way.  The direction he chooses is paramount.  To this point, I see the description that fits him the best is that of a turtle. He lies low, pushes his head forward occasionally, rolls over on his back as suits his ideas, and takes a timid step when the interests of Guyanese are up for grabs.

I firmly believe that in Anil Nandlall, there is a man of rich talents, but one of those perennial regrets.  Someone who joins the long list of shirkers and absconders whose middle name is potential, but the first is no other but disappointment, and all in caps. The potential is there, no question.  Where is the patriotic fire that must burn at fever pitch. Brother Anil?  Where is the deployment of perspicacity for Guyanese?  Why am I counseling this learned, ranking Guyanese, when it should be the other way around?

Oil. The world calls it a treasure. A full storehouse, it is.  Where is Nandlallsahib?  I call this oil a bonanza, stupendous Powerball first prize, motherlode, and more.  I am still waiting to see Anil Nandlall the Guyanese man, not for Exxon, but being there for Guyanese in this their season of long-awaited harvest.  Instead of being the foremost man in this oil season of Guyanese, he has made our hands fall.  For he fights hard fights against his own.  For what, squire?  For the string on which dangled will be reeled in, and it will be that long-delayed turn at the helm?

To Mr. Nandlall, I tender this: there is the greatest difficulty, inestimable internal upheavals, with a Stability Clause in an oil contract that has a duration of decades.  That abomination can never be acceptable to any patriotic Guyanese.  That Stability Clause is a life sentence, with parole when there is assurance that the legs are crippled from all the energy drained.  Maybe, more than a life sentence, with an economic and psychological death sentence wrapped in one. I can never call myself a man, a citizen, a patriot again, if I were to keep the company of Alistair Routledge.

He is patriotic to his corporate calling, and I must recognize the man for that quality.  But Mr. Nandlall, what happened to the trousers?  Where have they gone?  Who yanked them off, sire?  I could understand and support a Stability Clause for five years max in the first place to recover sunk costs, with another five years (and some upward flexibility) to reap the returns of capital invested, skills and technology shared, and systems put in place.  In aggregate, I am somewhere between a dozen and 15 years altogether with that infernal concoction (clause), but not one hour more. It is the extent of my good will.  Perhaps, Mr. Nandlall cares to share publicly….  What Guyanese live with is not a Stability Clause, but a strangling prenuptial straitjacket without the rich joys in this Exxon-Guyana oil marriage.  It has all been one-sided, reducing this country’s people to virtual chattel slaves.  It is all about taking by Exxon and no giving to Guyanese.  It is appalling when Colonel Routledge shows his mug around here and talks about an incomparable revenue stream.  Those words are an insult to the voiceless and powerless of Guyana, who are made even more gullible and docile by the betrayers that they have for leaders.  They are not limited to politics, but across every area and layer of this enslaved society trapped in the throes of both greed and fear.  I ask myself how much of a contribution Mr. Nandlall has in the fear portion of this culture.  How much is he the personification of this national loser’s culture.

I confess that there is some grappling here.  I don’t know, won’t try to understand, how a man like Mohabir Anil Nandlall could live with himself.  I can’t and I am on the far periphery.  Of what good, what honor, is QC and SC?  The former is parchment and not wigs and gowns.  We are either men, or we are snails fit only to slither on our bellies.  Stand up and be counted, my brother, hopefully a friend in this national journey for the best from our patrimony.  I care not for regard.  I live for devoting heart and sinew to wrest the best from Exxon, from this oil, for all citizens (including Venezuelans, Haitians, Trinidadians).  It would be helpful to observe a reborn Anil Nandlall.  A delight to welcome to the fight against these new imperialists and colonizers.  If any Guyanese see Mr. Woods, the Exxon board of directors, its slew of investors, and their Guyana viceroy Alistair Routledge as any other, then I rechristen he or she, Maduro.

The secrecy must vanish.  The Faustian fraternity fragmented.  The ravishing reduced.  Get moving Mr. Nandlall.  Get that monkey off the back, shed mountain from the mind.  Stand for a noble cause.  There is none better than to lay it all on the line, and fight with one more thrust for one’s people.  It is the stuff of which authentic Kshatriyas are made, honorable ones.  The Bushido code lived by the Samurai.Regardless of what Nandlall does or doesn’t do, like Ol’ Man River, I just have to keep on rollin’ along.

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• Exxon, Guyanese, Mohabir Anil Nandlall, Mr. Nandlall

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