Lack of trust

Jun 13, 2024 Editorial

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Kaieteur News – The decision of the Government to hide large chunks of the US$7.3B audit report of ExxonMobil’s expenses from the public speaks volumes of an administration that cannot be trusted. The missing details of the audit cover the major expenditures of the oil company. As to why 40 pages of the report were redacted before it was published online is a cause of great concern and also suspicion.

As our Leader said yesterday, the people who are the bona fide owners, the first shareholders, in Guyana’s wealth do not have the privilege to view the billions in expenses that ExxonMobil bills against local oil revenues. If they cannot view, then they can neither review nor question. They cannot raise any objection about millions charged that are too much, or millions that should not be charged in the first place because they do not belong in the Guyana oil revenue bucket.  This is as big a loophole that could be, and that any oil superpower company could get.  To intensify the darkness,when the elected government of the owners of the national wealth partner with the local offshore oil consortium to conceal the billions of expenses, then the result is the result.  That is, US$6.5B for ExxonMobil and its gang, and US$1.6B for Guyana.

We have stressed in these columns before that where there is trust relationships flourish, things get done, and there is an environment that makes all feel very good about the quality that is so tangible, that can’t be denied. Trust is motherhood and marriage of a special kind, a brotherhood and sorority that speaks for itself. But when there is a scarcity of trust, then for all that there may be, that can be had, it is as if there is nothing.

When there is that nightmare of nightmares, where there is a total absence of trust, then for all the oil and money and promise of so much more, there is nothing. We trust each other to be there for us, look out for us, when we place certain heavy responsibilities in the hands of others.  Sometimes it could be over hard-earned money, of other valuable property, of our family, and for both the day-to-day present, as well as the unknown future.

We do this with security guards in whom we entrust our safety and the integrity of our property.  We do this when great trust is placed in the hands of those colleagues and comrades who help us to get things done, both little and big, sometimes personal, oftentimes national in scope. When they turn around and betray that trust, a battering of the spirit comes.  There is a draining of resolve, or a reflexive temptation to throw up hands and say how could this happen. That is, if this one could so quietly and secretly study, and scheme so cunningly, then why even bother to continue to invest in trusting others, when the prospect of favourable returns for the trust given is shattered so callously.

We urge our fellow citizens to look around and review how our environment is today. We ask them to recall from long ago and recent memory, from the long list of examples, how precious trust has been trampled upon in this society, and at every level. Our own situation at this newspaper is a case in point.  But this is a visible and physically touchable instance of trust violated, simply because it was so much in the bosom.  It is never a comforting feeling, a most shocking one, to come to the startling awareness that one has been living with a snake in the bosom.

But, just as there was this individual failure and group conspiracy to sabotage trust placed right here, there are those greater trusts vested in bigger and higher ones: those who raise their hands and plead for the gift of our trust, and promise to do what is right for us, the Guyanese people.  Politicians in Guyana, particularly the senior, more vocal, and recognisable ones, make pretty speeches of how much good they have in mind for the Guyanese people, as they beg for our support.  But deep down in their hearts, is where the real truths of their commitments given so easily lies.

To support is to vote for, and to vote for is to trust.  Every ballot cast with that simplest of letters from the alphabet, an X in the right place, is a deed of trust. Do right, do good, do what is truthful, do what is wise and just and clean. We ask our fellow Guyanese a simple question: what is it that citizens have gotten in return for the last six decades for their trust? Outside of leaders’ inner circle of friends, family, and other favoured followers, what have leaders delivered in return for the priceless trust they received?

Politicians were liars and frauds and deceivers long before oil, and now that that beauty springing from below the sea is here, men in the PPP/C Government and the APNU+AFC Opposition have lost their minds.  They hide, they lie, they makeup stories, and they mock Guyanese as they kick aside the trust given to them.  Then they pour salt in the wounds of despairing citizens with more falsehoods, more trickeries, and more thieveries.  Just like those once associated with this paper, brothers trusted and held close.  The biggest betrayers and biggest robbers in Guyana are higher up.  They are in government offices and political headquarters.

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• ExxonMobil, Government, Guyana, owners, suspicion

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