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Jagdeo’s strategy

Aug 14, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Guyana’s chief oil policymaker, Bharrat Jagdeo, has a bag of strategies that would make a skilled defense attorney proud.  We have been in sync with them for a long period, but must share with the public starting today, as he keeps adding more elements to his bag of tricks.

Ask Jagdeo something important about oil, and he changes into a magician immediately.  He reaches into his bag and pulls out a white rabbit that he holds aloft.  It is his way of distracting Guyanese about what is really going on with their immense oil wealth.  Meanwhile both he and ExxonMobil carry on with their usual game of smoke and mirrors.

One long running practice perfected by the nation’s chief oil policymaker is to buy himself time to evade the walls closing in around him.  He dithers and he dissembles with much time lost, then he brings out his battering rams to bring down those asking relevant questions that Guyanese want answered, straight answers that make sense. Jagdeo made non-answers his standard strategy and first practice, even though they lost value for him.  Audits of ExxonMobil billions of US Dollars in expenses and their findings, are one such example.  Guyana’s Oil Czar twisted and turned in the wind, bought time, then came up with a solution to bail himself out of a tight corner and give himself some breathing room.

The first tactic in his broad strategy having failed, we watched as he tried his hand at another slippery escapade in his second.  It was to send reporters from the independent media, who were asking tough and embarrassing questions on the oil and gas sector to check with different ministers.  Time proved to be a timesaver for Jagdeo but turned out to be yet another of his patented wild goose chases.  One minister pretended ignorance, while another found solace in silence.  Like the chief oil policymaker man, no minister was so reckless as to speak out of turn and spill any of his oil secrets.  It is reasonable to think that seasoned ministers and reasonably educated ministers were all acting on orders.  In practice, play stupid, say nothing, shed no insight; the government, the leadership, and the true nature and depth of the ExxonMobil-PPPC Government partnership relationship all remain safe.

Another tried and true tactic practice perfected by chief oil policymaker Jagdeo is go after his favorite scapegoats.  More than half of the time in what he calls press conferences (a series of farces) is spent ranting and raving in uncontrolled abandon at the Opposition PNC, or another convenient target, the output of this newspaper and the radio programs of its publishers.  A question is raised about an independent oversight oil body and Jagdeo reminds everyone by railing at what the PNC did.  It was the politicization of state bodies, which he is working hard to avoid at all costs. This was Jagdeo at his best, his most cunning, given that he has done so more profusely.  He gains two benefits from pointing at the PNC and KN: questions on an independent oversight oil body are swept off the table (more time bought) and he retains in his own hands all the power and control over the oil sector.  The president, the cabinet, and the rest of the government kit and caboodle are all reduced to the role of bystanders and observers.

Jagdeo displays the same time-buying strategy, as boosted by all its related twisty and twirly tactics, on a host of other sensitive oil issues.  It could be what the PPPC Government (he himself) is doing to recover the hundreds of millions improperly charged by ExxonMobil for expenses involving the already given away Kaieteur and Canje oil blocks. Or how many new barrels of oil have been found by ExxonMobil in the last eight discoveries that it announced.  Or interest rate(s) charged by ExxonMobil on its loans/investments to Guyana. Or how much the oil company is paying to rent the capping stack.  Jagdeo’s strategy has been to bluff his way by brawling, dodging to buy time, and hiding behind smokescreens.  He thinks he is buying time.  What he succeeds in doing is making himself look pathetic, impotent, and childishly comical.

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