Exxon contract can be changed

Nov 21, 2024 The GHK Lall Column

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…Hard Truths 

By GHK Lall

Kaieteur News- The sacred U.S. Constitution in its original form was and is a compact with the American people.  Yet, there came a time when that compact or covenant, that inviolable contract, had to be changed.  It took a bloody Civil War, and tireless battling in the halls of power and public opinion to amend a particularly obscene provision (that “odious institution”) in the US Constitution.  Men of wisdom and reasoning, men of good faith, make binding agreements, then they are sometimes forced to amend them by dint of circumstances.

From 1787 onwards, Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution had certain words enshrined. Those words spoke to the three-fifths calculation (compromise) to account for slaves on the matter of representation in the US Congress.  It took almost a hundred years, until 1868 in the post-Civil War era, before Section 2 of the14^th amendment to the U.S. Constitution came into effect and took precedence over that three-fifths clause in Article 1 et seq.  To President Ali, Vice President Jagdeo, Attorney General Nandlall, if that most venerable of documents, that most sacrosanct of contracts with the American people, could be revisited, touched, refined, and modified for the better, then what about this 21^st century obscenity parading under the banner of the ExxonMobil contract?  The fact that this revolting creature called an oil contract is the handiwork of Americans introduces convulsions and utter contempt from this American.  Contracts can be changed, and the Americans know that more than most.

To Ali, Jagdeo, and Nandlall, all honorable Guyanese men, I remind that men make wars, then bind themselves in peace treaties.  Yet they break those treaties at will and wage more war.  To Ali and Jagdeo, leaders now possessing an extraordinary verbal flexibility, men do not give their word, a contract with the Guyanese people, and then break that word.  No, my brothers, men of honor do not do so live that way, lead in that manner.  Before each of those words, a harsh and piercing adjective could have been added.  I didn’t.  In so doing, other Guyanese are given that honor with whatever choice words are affixed and incorporate their scorn, rage, and disgust at our leaders who exhibit a remarkable fluidity in their backbones.  Contracts can be changed, and they know it.

This Exxon contract was conceived in calumny, composed of trickery, and is applied with consummate, cold blooded barbarity.  Mr. Alistair Routledge should be reading, absorbing.  The Romans had Attila the Hun who sacked and savaged.  Fifteen hundred years later, Guyanese have their Huns by the rampaging hordes.  They also ransack and pillage, and their uniform consists of red, white, and blue.  Those are among some of my favorite things.  This is the sound of incandescent rage, not the Sound of Music, Mr. Routledge.  At what has been done to my national leaders-Ali, Jagdeo, Nandlall, and the eunuchs that have been made of them.  Often, I ponder if it is the kind of corporate surgery practiced that renders them into more than mere political eunuchs.  There is unimagined appreciation at the spiraling discomfort brought about by a contract (Exxon’s) that is held aloft for being so sacred that it supersedes the sovereignty of Guyana and of every Guyanese.  What are Guyanese, Mr. Routledge, three-fifths men and two-fifths pliant, unthinking, beasts?  With the national sovereignty of Guyana reduced to the tatters of shameless nonexistence, what present and future existence does that leave current and later Guyanese?  Why is this revulsion of a contract allowed to breathe Guyana’s air?  Why?  Why?

When Guyanese political leaders-Ali, Jagdeo, Nandlall, Norton, or Hughes-yield in abject surrender to that slavery reality, that contract denounced in heaven, using the covers of sleek political costumes, they consign their fellow tribesmen to the new slave plantation.  They condemn themselves.  None of them, and neither do I, need Professor Clive Thomas to alert them that contracts can be changed.  If Guyana can’t do that, when circumstances are unjust, when the parties were so unevenly matched, when vital information could have been withheld by Exxon, then this cannot be said to be a country anymore.  It is an entity that conducts a hysterectomy on its own sovereignty.  It is not a country, but one that bows to slavery’s brutality, and all too readily because of rank political expediency.

All of Guyana’s political leaders may consider themselves to be the smartest people around.  I give them the freedom to think that their crass vulgarity is undetected and unchallenged.  But their craven groveling before, and dependency on, Exxon and Messrs. Woods and Routledge to sponsor their political opportunism and leadership ambition is now the horror and hurt of all Guyana.  Sanctity of contract is a pair of panties that reveal more than it conceals, my brothers.  Contracts can be changed.  Americans tossed some tea into Boston harbor when they had little going for them.  I admire those men dressed up as Native Americans.  They were real men willing to challenge a mad king and a mighty empire.  Are there no real men in Guyana?  Politically honorable men.  Patriotic men.  Guyanese men who care about the fate and aspirations of their fellow Guyanese?  I identify, I call, Messrs. Ali, Jagdeo, Nandlall, Norton, and Hughes: stand up, stand out.  Fight with every fiber, fight with all might.  Get rid of that most odious contract.  Be done with the subterfuges.

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

(Exxon contract can be changed)

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• American people, Attorney General Nandlall, Civil War, Constitution, hard truths, President Ali, Vice President Jagdeo

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