Jagdeo taking the smart way out

Jun 27, 2025 Editorial, News

Kaieteur News – Suddenly, Vice President Jagdeo is sounding like a vigorous leader, making decisions associated with bold national leadership. A few weeks back, it was no more oil deals will be approved before the September 1 general and regional elections.

Last week, it was no to any gas-to-energy deal before the elections with the Turkish power company, Karpower, currently supplying Guyana with backup electricity.

Also, from last week, and also as it relates to the upcoming elections, Guyana will not finalize any gas monetization deal with Fulcrum LNG before the elections. This skeletal and shaky looking company had come in for some sharp criticism when it was selected to monetize Guyana’s gas resources. Now, thanks to elections, Fulcrum LNG just snared an extension on life for itself. Elections, are all the biggest priority currently, and it is illuminating how a street-smart political operator like Jagdeo finds new uses for such to hide his weaknesses.

Elections have traditionally brought out the richest and poorest from Guyanese politicians competing for power. Now this year’s elections are serving as the prop on which Jagdeo leans as the central basis for his delaying decisions. During most of the last five years, all that Guyana’s chief policymaker, appointed by his own hand, was capable of was saying yes and yes to anyone and anything that sounded as though it had some strain of a foreign accent in its makeup.

When it was stamped ExxonMobil, or indicated some relationship to the company, Jagdeo was always ready with pen in hand to give the greenlight, and sign away another slice of Guyana’s wealth for nothing. Whether oil or gold, the foreigners and their investors feasted on the rich patrimonies of Guyanese, while Guyanese themselves learned more about how to deal with living in an increasingly famished state. Now the pending elections serve as a brake on the enthusiastic borrowing and spending, arranging and signing of deals to keep the corruption machine running at high speeds.

A contrast is conspicuous as he does this about turn, with a marked preference for showing restraint relative to oil driven projects. However, the government’s scheming on how to squeeze yet another set of billions from Guyana’s treasury is still running at close to maximum speeds. There is no letup in that area, with the PPPC Government just using its one-seat majority in parliament to rake in another $57.5B through a supplementary budget. What makes that supplementary budget so intriguing is that it occurred within a mere three months after the budget of all national budgets for $1.382T was passed in parliament.

Support for projects, or billions sneaked out from a supplementary budget for the ruling party’s elections war chest, that is the question. It’s baffing that a government that speaks of discipline with the nation’s finances, signal some slowing down, could be so loose with its purse strings.

We have our own interpretation, though, relative to why Jagdeo is giving himself high marks with all this clever repositioning he is doing for gas-to-energy, gas monetization, and new oil and gas projects. When no new power supply agreements are signed, then there is little for the media to be digging up and presenting to the nation relative to terms and conditions. When no new oil deals are signed, then the weak and incompetent manner in which Jagdeo and his PPPC Government manages Guyana’s precious natural resources do not draw more condemnation from observers about another giveaway to ExxonMobil. And when the gas monetization project is put on hold until after the elections, the whole Fulcrum LNG mystery setup stays under the media and national radars for a
few months more.

Jagdeo may congratulate himself that he is the mentally nimblest Guyanese. We have a surprise for him: he is not. It’s because he has been carrying on with these tricks for so long that he is now seen through, very predictable. His talk about what would not be right or fair, viz., not signing off on new contracts now, is that of a leader who has squandered most of his credibility.

We think that he’s lying low, so that no negatives attach to him, and for which elections serve as the best camouflage.

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Editorial, Jagdeo, Karpower

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