Exxon-raw, uncensored, unlike anything before

Nov 24, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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…Hard Truths

By GHK Lall

 Kaieteur News- Exxon now resides in a new stratosphere all by itself.  A company that became a country by default.  The irony is that Exxon’s visions did not extend that high, or in that direction.  It became a country running what used to be a country with that being handed on a platter.

Aside from the automatic profits, oil is for second fiddlers, the former football man (indirect ownership of the New York Jets of the NFL) and the Chinese.  The elected leaders of Guyana were only too pleased to relinquish national sovereignty to Exxon.  One awed leader was reduced hushed whispering: a superpower.  It is now the national power in Guyana.  Another nervous wreck was so filled with morbid fear that he was bent double trying not to spook jittery investors.  Thus, the judiciary had to be put in its place.  I am thinking of how ruling pols are like frightened children walking on tiptoe so as not to agitate the peace and contentment of a feared parent.

The arrival of oil sunk the last vestiges of nationhood and leadership below those undersea oil reservoirs.  Exxon saw to that, then took over.  Like Julius Caesar, Exxon came, saw, conquered.  With not a fiber tightened in resistance from leading Guyanese.  Men made into muffins.  Thus, Alistair Routledge strides like a colossus over a prostrate Guyana.  He can set up his billboards with whatever he wants them to say and nobody in Guyana can tell him that he has got it wrong, and that he must take them down.  Not the sitting president.  Not a former president.  So, who is the master of this local universe?  It is certainly not the men with the impressive sounding titles, the panting entourages that follow blindly.

Consider this.  The men from Exxon could reach deep into Guyana’s oil ministry and get a glorified clerk to write off over US$100 million just like that; one stroke and it is gone.  I go along with the charade that there was no orchestrator or arranger of national standing involved, but only a minion with a mind of his own, who made that write off decision.  Where is the outrage over that unpardonable breach, that violation of partnership protocols?  Not at the Guyanese scapegoat, but at the Exxon operators who influenced that decision.  Outrage, at least, for the show of it, to put a little gloss on an embarrassment if only to save face.

Think of something else, fellow Guyanese: Exxon can manipulate, control, and command Guyana’s chief lawmaking institution, the National Assembly, without taking one step in its direction.  A look is all that it takes, not even a word.  And previously loud Guyanese men and women, who once laid claim to learning and some miniscule measure of self-regard, fall flat on their faces.  Parliament is now an Exxon pawn.  I hate to say this, but a big segment of Guyana’s political elite shamelessly stands among the company’s army of helpless puppets.  Exxon pulls a string, and they dance a jig.  It is how Exxon is a law unto itself.  A nation made by its own hand.  It is expression of power.  The arrogance of power.  Real power.  Those who have it flaunt it.  Look at those whom the Guyanese people trusted.  With their hopes and dreams.  With their aspirations and destiny.  Those who is not running for cover are wriggling like a worm.  Whoever is not hiding is working extra hard to be nonthreatening.  To be seen as some grinning, scraping, shuffling dusky silhouette.  The lesser seen the better.

Better not to be heard.  What was that one?  It had better not be renegotiation.  No! No!  No sir!  A slip of the tongue and a momentary failure of the mind.  My word! Look at what the great oil inheritance has done to Guyanese.  Listen to the verbal gyrations and psychological convulsions that bedevil national leaders.  They are a ventriloquist’s dream come true.  Alistair Routledge has something to say, and the sound comes from them.  Sugar causes Guyanese governments and leaders to get chronic sicknesses.  Then oil came along and superseded that: the name Exxon generates political seizures, leaves leadership paralysis as its calling card.  Oh, the local powers can scream at the peons.   But when they must face the white man, and force him to wipe that smirking grin from his face, they wet themselves.  When the macho Guyanese men of politics must put the big men form Exxon in their place, it is as if the Guyanese are in the presence of gods.  Their tongues get tied, their guts loosen, their domestic bravado disappears.

Exxon came here for oil and to make money.  Without a voice raised, it ended up owning and running a country.  Who wants to disagree with that starkest of local reality?  I have a simple test that should close out all arguments, all differences.  Present a leader, just one, who has the belly, the backbone, the brawn, and the brainpower to confront the people of Exxon and say this is the way that things will be from now.  It is either this way or no way.  It is either the Guyanese way or go thine way.  Show me, and I will silence myself, slip into the ether of oil oblivion.

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

(Exxon-raw, uncensored, unlike anything before)

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• Exxon’s visions, hard truths, jittery investors, New York Jets, The elected leaders of Guyana, the judiciary

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