Promises made, promises broken

Feb 11, 2025 Editorial, News

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Editorial…

Kaieteur News-Soon Guyanese will be going back to the polls to elect a new government. It is our position that all those who seek office must be judged by their deeds. Much has been said about the PNCR and its attempts to rig the 2020 elections and the mountain of corruption it presided over during the five years of the coalition government. These things for many people summarily have cancelled them out as a credible contender, even as the opposition itself has cast the PPP/C as corrupt and incompetent group.

In our Monday edition, we reported Vice President, Bharrat basically defending his government’s backpedalling on the many promises they made on the campaign trail back in 2020 regarding the oil contract the Coalition Government signed with ExxonMobil. Owing to their signal failure on the matter of the oil and gas sector, the government has been trying its level best to prevent the upcoming elections being framed as a referendum on their handling of it.

We have seen already when the question of a referendum to renegotiate the ExxonMobil deal was raised, how Jagdeo was quick to pour cold water on it, deeming it a new speaking point for the opposition. Instead, he wanted the opposition to talk about things he feels his government has an advantage on. He said thusly: “So one of the new causes…the people who signed the 2016 contract want referendum now, they and the WPA. They want to obfuscate the key issues, they don’t want to talk about delivery of house lots to people, fulfilling their dream of owning a home, they don’t want to talk about lower mortgage rates for people, they don’t want to talk about assistance in building, like core homes or young professional homes.” He stressed that the opposition is not speaking about the expansion of healthcare, the new water treatment plants nor the iron removal plants and a number of other achievements of the government but they are desperately looking “to find some issue to mobilise themselves around.

Then he said his government will not be caught in that trap as “GECOM must focus on preparing for the 2025 elections…They would love to have GECOM or someone else particularly GECOM divert their attention to something else. We are not falling into that trap at all. So that’s the only thing that they can come up with right now.”

Interestingly enough, as leader of the opposition, Jagdeo was a champion of renegotiation and better management of the sector. Back in 2019, while being interviewed on 94.1 FM he said: “They (Coalition) sold us out to the foreigners – the oil companies. Every time there is a find there, our people should be sad because nothing comes our way. We are going to renegotiate those contracts because that’s not what we had in mind. When we were in the early days, we were coaxing the people (ExxonMobil and partners) to go along. They (APNU+AFC) came into office (and met) 3 billion barrels of proven reserves and then gave up zero royalty, no taxes, no ring-fencing, no local content for these people to spend any money here.”

He continued: “Paying our people GY$72,000 a month when the foreigner is getting US$10,000. Bringing water from California to drink here. We are paying for all that. Landscaping – they wanna contract it to a company coming from abroad and the Trinidadians and others are just walking in not only in the oil sector but they are getting all the prime lands too… So that is why I got back into politics. I’m not prepared to see this happen; I have no desire to be President again.”

The erstwhile former president had even promised to set up a Petroleum Commission and when confronted about it recently, he told a news conference that he has dealt with that 100 times before. And what did he say before. In August 2020, he was reported as saying that the body would be set up in six months and the Attorney General, Anil Nandlall told the media in 2021, that the Natural Resource Ministry’s legal department, along with the Chief Parliamentary Counsel attached to his office, was working on the document to facilitate the change which the new Government wanted to the draft Petroleum Commission Bill that was left behind by the previous administration. Vice President Jagdeo went from stating that the Commission would be set up within months to claiming that the Commission is not necessary. At an August 2024 press conference, Jagdeo said, “There is no magic with a Petroleum Commission…There is no magic, we have given our agencies the tools to manage the sector.”

We have reported ad nauseam on how this country is being robbed owing to the lopsided Exxon contract. Just take one deficiency of the deal-the lack of ring-refencing provision. Experts have said without ring-fencing provisions, Guyana will be shortchanged on every oil discovery. We have had 46 so far. With ring-fencing provision, expenses for one project will be isolated and accounted for against that project, and that one alone. Expenses must not be given carte blanche to roam freely to wherever (other projects) and whenever it pleases those charging such expenses (when nimble accounting tricks are being used as camouflage) to mislead others by manipulating numbers of immense proportions and consequences.

This is what Exxon is doing, when it takes the fullest of unfair advantage to utilise the lack of ring-fencing in Guyana’s oil contract to boost its bottom line and delight its investors. This is what started out, most abominably, with the previous APNU Coalition Government, and now continues with uninterrupted stride under this PPP/C Government. It is the loophole of loopholes, and our alternately wise and wretched political leaders in today’s PPP/C Government and the Opposition know this, but are determined to do nothing about.

We say that our national political leaders are wise and wretched at the same time. We did so purposefully, because we think that a survey of local circumstances confirms this condition of our leaders. They have the intellect, the total awareness, of what is lacking, what needs to be done, and how to go about closing this gaping ring-fencing loophole, but they are wretched by their inactions. The absence of sturdy ring-fencing provisions is a perversity that must be corrected. The continuing of this country without it, opens the door for Exxon to bulk-up its expenses by the billions and then cunningly spread them from one project to another. Exxon has not dealt fairly with Guyana, it has cheated us, as was pointed out in the US$460M pre-contract expenses submitted by the company. And all Guyanese can be assured that as the billions of expenses come rolling in, there is great room for Exxon’s accountants and top corporate chiefs to gouge us some more, much more. One would have expected, with the same fervour the then leader of the opposition Jagdeo set his face against the lack of ring-fencing in 2019, in this the fifth year of oil production, he would have ensured it was in place. Instead, what we have are promises made and promises broken.

(Promises made, promises broken)

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• Coalition Government, Editorial, ExxonMobil deal, government’s backpedalling, PNCR

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