Exxon Awards

Jan 03, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths…

By GHK Lall

Kaieteur News- It’s time for the first Exxon Annual Awards.  These prestigious, much sought after, awards are a must have for the company’s top strivers, overachievers, and uber performers.  In the limited confines of a thumbnail, these superstars stand as superb representations of Exxon’s most trusted, most reliable assets: its priceless human components, as found anywhere in the world, including at its own Spring, Texas High Command complex.  Where else would they be nestled sparklingly, but in the dazzling jewels in Exxon’s crown -Guyana?

The most coveted award, the best that the American oil juggernaut has to offer is Most Prized Worker, Partner, Performer of the Year.  To Guyana’s Bharrat Jagdeo belongs that gold cup, along with a hug and a kiss on both cheeks.  Bharrat Jagdeo as the winner was such a foregone conclusion that Exxon bigwigs didn’t even consider another candidate, look at another envelope.   It is a most deserving award; nobody, but nobody, none anywhere on this planet [or any other] has labored so intensely on Exxon’s behalf.  Congratulations, Dr. Jagdeo; all those strenuous efforts, those astonishing feats of verbal gymnastics, have paid off.  Who am I to begrudge a man recognized for the luscious fruits of his toil?  At the risk of mixing metaphors, this award is the icing on the cake.  Hundreds of thousands of impoverished Guyanese could have a lavish New Year just dreaming of the richness of that cake itself.

Excellency, Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali cops the award for Most Cherished, Sacred Battler for Exxon.  It was President Ali’s valiant defense of the company’s contract, as enshrined in that one word representing so much.  Sanctity.  For Exxon and Ali, sanctity is untouchable motherhood, fatherhood, brotherhood, sisterhood, in the mighty neighborhood of Exxon Guyana.  A hood is the first bastion of hoodlums, bums, and scums, and that is the best place for that contract and any sanctity attached to it.  This repugnant construction is damned when Guyanese are hungry, live-in poverty.

The third most glittering award (guess who?), for Most Creative, Most Energetic, Most Tireless company man for Exxon, the winner by a brisk canter, the champion of champions, is Attorney General, Mohabir Anil Nandlall, SC, MP, JP, ET.  To enlighten my fellow Guyanese, the latter is not extraterrestrial, but Exxon’s Tribune.  Have these three industrious Guyanese sons excelled above and beyond the call of country and company!  Who else could have won these highest honors that Exxon could bestow?  Ambassador Sam Hinds comes faintly to mind, departs just as fleetingly.  But there is no other, my fellow Guyanese, but these three Guyanese who I am pleased to call my brothers.  How I wish that some of their acrobatics and histrionics would rub off on me.  Just a speck or two, so I can have the experience of giving my all for Exxon, self-promotion, and nation in that order, and in the fundamentalist way that they did.  As a qualifier, Drs. Ali, Jagdeo, and Nandlall make me proud to be who I am, and how I am.  I will be no other.

Then, there is the next tier of accolades and medals and ribbons, and who knows what else, in the Exxon long lineup and big bag of being good to, and doing good for, its most dearly beloved Guyanese.  There is the award for Most Inspiring Contributor, Most Resilient Operator, Most Thankless Laborer, which is now proudly owned by the joint winners, Opposition Leaders Aubrey Norton and Nigel Hughes.  Never before in the history of this Magnificent Oil Province, Guyana, has there been such a dynamo for a duo, never have so much been given, with so little coming back to the Guyanese people.  Never before has Exxon owed so much as to these two for holding the line, for straddling mines in a no man’s land.  Silent guerilla fighters, invisible operators, they have been for the cause of Exxon and that other word that is equated with kings.  It begins with a c and it is not cotton.  A secret peek at the judges’ scorecard reveals that the competition was extremely close for this hallowed trophy.  Thus, only joint winners would do justice to the proceedings and any long-term cachet to be attached to the trophies and champions.  As an aside, the three-member panel of Exxon judges included Mr. Darren Woods and Mr. Alistair Routledge.  May anyone who interprets that to mean that the award (and other company) books are cooked from beginning to end, be ashamed of themselves, live in interesting times.

There is one last award left in Exxon Christmas Santa sack.  It is for the Most Immovable Force, the Most Impenetrable Object, standing by the side of Exxon, Western energy security, corporate prosperity.  There could have been only one winner.  Ladies and gentlemen, there is Guyana’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  No job is too dirty, no racket takes it too low, and no alley is too dark, for Guyana’s EPA.  It is dedication to duty at its finest.  Since nobody, local or foreign, is going to award me anything, I thought it best to give one to myself.  The Wisest Fool in the Southern Hemisphere.  For those who refuse to get with Exxon’s program, prostitute self for its visions (and, yes, that other incentive, too), then that’s all that is coming.  Happy New Year, everyone.

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

(Exxon Awards)

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• Bharrat Jagdeo, Exxon Awards, Exxon’s crown -Guyana, hard truths, Prized Worker

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