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Jan 15, 2025 Editorial, News

Editorial…

Kaieteur News- Guyanese have come to appreciate that everything that Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo does has the unknown about it.  Unknown to them, but not unknown to Jagdeo.  Most things that he gets involved in, lends his backing to have some hidden motive that surfaces long after.  The development involving tax waivers for ExxonMobil provides a study in the cleverness of Jagdeo, how he positions himself for later, regardless of the cost to Guyanese.

For the longest period, when Jagdeo and the PPPC were in the opposition, to mention the APNU+AFC Coalition in his presence, was to become a marked man.  The Coalition was the worst with venom and rage dripping out of Jagdeo and his minions for that ruling group.  Would this not be the last group to be found in Guyana that Jagdeo do any kind of business with, for any reason?  Most Guyanese would have thought so, given the heat of political passions and the barely concealed contempt of both groups for one another.  But the unbelievable happened in that Jagdeo agreed to meet secretly with the APNU+AFC Coalition and added his support to a blatant sellout of Guyana’s interests.

Tax waivers involving billions of US dollars were put before then Opposition Leader Jagdeo and he quickly, seamlessly was onboard immediately.  The first thing to be said is that the clever political operator that is Jagdeo, doesn’t rush into situations or decisions with his eyes closed and his hands tied.  He is not a man to be hurried, but one who functions according to his own calculations.  There was a big calculation in that tax waiver pushed under his nose by the Coalition.  Had he refused to give it his full backing, so that there was unanimous parliamentary approval of the waivers, the word would have leaked straight back to ExxonMobil.  The clearest message would have been sent about what Jagdeo was all about and which side of the oil fence he stood.  To refuse to back the tax waivers would have left him in a bad place with ExxonMobil, and the people in that company do not forget.

In effect, when Jagdeo agreed to meet secretly with the APNU+AFC Coalition to discuss tax waivers for ExxonMobil, he was already well into his slippery games.  By lending the full weight of the PPPC to the tax waivers, what Jagdeo was doing was set himself up in a favorable light with the wheeler-dealers in ExxonMobil.  He was already way ahead of the game; in that he was sending the strongest and clearest signals to ExxonMobil that he was looking out for what benefits the company.  Even if the cost is in the US billions for the Guyana treasury, it didn’t mean much to Jagdeo, given how far he would go to serve ExxonMobil’s interests and please its bosses.  For him to agree to the tax waivers without seeing or reading the terms and conditions of the ExxonMobil oil contract was an indication of how much he was already committed lock, stock, and barrel to the company.  In other words, whatever had to be done to keep ExxonMobil happy, it was as good as done.

It is incredible that a leader with the political depth and long experience of Jagdeo would blindly agree to those tax waivers.  We say blindly because he claims not to have seen or read the oil contract.  It is fair to say that he could not have known what its tax clauses said, but there he was giving away billions through waivers.  As a former Minister of Finance, it is second nature to Jagdeo that as soon as he heard tax waivers for ExxonMobil, the gears in his head would start to grind.  The tax waivers would amount to a huge amount of money, and the PPPC would be part and parcel of that heavy subsidy to ExxonMobil.  If that was Jagdeo then, giving away to ExxonMobil lavishly when he had little power, what is to be expected of him today when he has accumulated so much unchecked power?  Billions in tax waivers were nothing to Jagdeo then.  Whatever the number of billions for ExxonMobil today, don’t expect Vice President Jagdeo to have any objections.

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