The newest great Guyana divide

Jul 21, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – Any Guyanese who harbors the idea that this country has maxed out on dividing itself, has it wrong.  I do not exclude myself from those who so lapsed.  A search for the usual suspects, as drawn from the pages of history, identifies religious division, cultural division, class division, cosmopolitan versus countryside division, political division and, of course, the all-purpose and ever-present racial division. Taken singly, they provoke different levels of alarm; when combined; on the other hand, the result brings head spins, already frail spirits to shrink further.  As if there are not divisions that cripple this country, there is the newest, great divide in Guyana: the GREAT GUYANESE OIL DIVIDE.  Just when one more was the last thing that Guyanese needed, that is exactly what they got.

The Guyana Oil Divide has its close comrades assembled on one side, and its aggressive adversaries parked on the other.  Because most Guyanese know less than they should about this national oil inheritance and treasure, they are not in the best position to justify why they have a foot in the oil camp.  Or why they should look at the surrounding oil circumstances and take a stand against what gains increasing dominance.  Most Guyanese know next to nothing about oil technical(s), oil dynamics, oil operations, oil sales and marketing, oil prices, oil supply, oil volatility and, naturally, oil politics, as these are arbitrarily selected from a host of components.  If Guyanese don’t know what they have (the grandness of it), then how can they be how they are (the positions taken) and where they are (how much better they should be). The result is the sorrow of a growing human and national tragedy.

How many barrels currently (c’mon, Mr. Routledge)?  What should it already have meant, must mean now (NOW) for the men and women of Guyana (tell them, Dr. J)? sThe whole oil story in all its rich tapestry.  It’s okay to batter the PNC and AFC for their ignominious gift to Guyanese.  But the sum of President Ali’s and VP Jagdeo’s efforts on this national wealth cannot stop there.  Either or both must tell the Guyanese people that this is what the oil represents in its undistilled excellence and magnificence; and this is what they will lay on the line to get.  All of themselves, all the time.  It is my regret to report the bad news: neither of the two national leaders-great national leaders [please don’t ask my criteria for how I arrived there]-have put heart and soul, power and vigor, behind getting for Guyanese what should rightfully be theirs.

Fairness would characterize such.  Justness would too.  By any standard, American or Guyanese, such fairness and justness would deliver what belongs to every Guyanese head, be it bronzed or braided or bedeviled by age or barber’s blade.  To my regret, Drs. Ali and Jagdeo have both displayed a marked squeamishness at the sight of blood, even when it is not shed.  So, they refuse to fight Exxon.  They fight Guyanese.  Guyanese who stand up and speak-up about their rank cowardice to confront the Caucasians.  How the sons of those mountains ended up in America is not a subject for today.  These two extraordinary Guyanese macho men, (macho oilmen, I may add) gather their forces, identify their local tormentors, and see their dogs free. Ever see rabid yellow dawgs?  Those are the kind that Ali and Jagdeo sic on those who press for more from Exxon from this oil legacy bequeathed to them by upstairs. This is where the nastiness and brutishness and rattishness (local Creole) takeover and transform the great national oil wealth into the Newest Great Guyana Divide.

The Great Guyana Oil Divide is killing Guyanese.  Before it destroys Guyanese, it dissipates their energies and spirit.  It devastates their hopes and aspirations.  Then, it divides them again, one against the other.  To be about getting more from this glittering oil jewel (I copy Mr. Woods and Mr. Routledge’s words and postures [who am I to differ with these oil masters?]) is to be anti-Exxon.  To be anti-Exxon is to be anti-PPP.  To be anti-PPP is to be anti-Jagdeo.  And, out of belated respect, to be anti-Ali.  How is that (or those) for a divide?  To be for what is right on this oil is to be anti-ruling party, antigovernment, and to take this matter to its ugly extreme, to be anti a certain race.  This oil has mutated beyond divide and conquer.  It is to divide first and then destroy.  It is ceaseand desist; or else…. Orbe ready to join the ranks of the deceased.  Trust me, Guyana is well along that road, and it will come to that day, if not today, then in some extended tomorrow.

It might be humorous or ludicrous, but that has never stopped me.  Delivering what leaders (Ali, Jagdeo, and others) consider as outrageous and let loose their lovelies to define as traitorous does not matter to me in the least.  Amid this acrimonious divide, and anti this and anti that (as alleged) who are the ones that are pro Guyana?  Pro the Guyanese people?  Pro the poor people?  Pro oil justice for all?  There would be no better expressions of what is pro-PPP, pro-PNC, pro-AFC, and pro the biggest C in this country: Citizens.  Guyanese of every extraction, without any subtraction: the rainbow, the neighbors here.  Instead of the New Great Guyana Oil Divide, I recommend that energies and intellect and passions be devoted to what could be the Great Guyanese Oil Springtide, Oil Upside.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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• Cultural, GHK Lall, Guyana, hard truths, History

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