Thanksgiving for oil, cursing a tragic diamond

Nov 27, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

---

Hard Truths by GHK Lall

(Kaieteur News) – There is thanksgiving for this national oil inheritance, all 11 billion barrels of it.  Thanksgiving to divine providence and Exxon for the many other billions of barrels still to be disclosed.  Not undiscovered and waiting in the watery depths to be found, but those discovered and not disclosed.  In wishing Mr. Alistair Routledge and the other Americans on his team a Happy Thanksgiving, I apologize for placing Exxon second and divine providence (God) first.  There is praise and thanks for this Guyanese oil bonanza, but I would be stiffing my fellow citizens, if I pretended not to know the tragic resource curse that it has become.  Like the ill-fated Hope Diamond.  Since I know, I must share, in the spirit of Thanksgiving.

Look at what the arrival of oil has done to the men and women leading the way in Guyana.  Those who were fanatics whenever the word colonialism came up, are now the closest disciples of colonialism’s bigger twin brother, the one known as commercialism.  From down with colonialism to up with commercialism.  A UNDP team came here to study Guyana’s always stormy elections, and delivered just what its British funders made a part of their terms.  All is bright and beautiful at GECOM; magnificent elections, a majestic achievement.  Money talks, the other stuff walks.  On this Thanksgiving Day, Guyanese absorb how leaders progress from cursing colonialism to welcoming the new colonizers, those who make the cash registers jingle, but leave the poor masses more impoverished than before.  Guyanese top dogs and their pups feasting on Thanksgiving turkey and its trimmings, while the savages (I take the liberty) are left the turkey’s teeth to consume.  From America to Guyana with love.  Indoctrinating the natives has a price, and somebody has to pay it.  In socialism, everyone gets a slice; in oil capitalism, it is survival of the cleverest and the slickest.  Just take a look and a listen to the swiveling, sizzling brothers, Ali and Jagdeo.  Happy Thanksgiving, captains.

I tell people that those who touch oil, do well to recall the record of the Hope Diamond.  Play the fool with it, and be ready to collect a fool’s reward.  There was Trinidad.  There was Iraq.  There is Nigeria.  There is Venezuela.  Somehow the fellas in charge here convince themselves that they are smarter than all the rest put together.  But I caution.  Oil is a gun that shoots both ways.  It is part of what’s branded by the bright people as resource curse.  My definition is different.  He who plays games with oil ends up in a lake of fire.  Recall the Shah of Persia swaggering on his peacock throne.  Wasn’t he the king of kings in a valley known for producing kings!  He couldn’t even get a brick to call his home, lay his head.

The superstars here think that they have all the bases covered.  Sanctity of contract.  They cursed the contract first; now they sanctify it.  Now they in the PPP consecrate themselves as the foremost champions of that same contract that they once condemned.  Exxon celebrates today, but there is the sacrilege of sanctity of contract.  Dress that up in a Savile Row suit, or wrap it in zinc sheet, and sanctity of contract is the new imperialism.  Sanctity of contract is of men worshipping before the altars of hypocrisy, expediency, and slavery.  They tell us that sovereignty matters so much that territorial integrity must be defended with sweat and tears.  And the bugles moaning Taps (or the Last Post), should it come to that fateful pass.  Then the same PPP patriots turn right around, without a blink, and herald sanctity of contract.  The sacred, incomparable integrity of national sovereignty made to bow down before sanctity of contract.  This is the curse that leading men call on themselves, when they sell the birthright of a people for a secure place for themselves on the ladder of governance.  These are the same ones urging Guyanese to put sovereignty and territorial integrity on the highest pedestal.

This oil has been a blessing for masters, local and foreign.  The Curse of Caracas hangs right next to it, and exposing the vulnerable masses of Guyanese.  Citizens don’t need a Jagdeo to make their lives edgy.  They have Maduro, or his successors, to do that in spades.  Thanksgiving – a time of men making merry from the opulence of Guyana’s oil.  Thanksgiving – the curse that comes with it: one imperial power to the North (a corporate one), and another imperial power (a neighbour) to the West.  This oil is like that Hope Diamond: glittering and exciting in the beginning; haunting and destroying in its owning.  Happy Thanksgiving to all, all.

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

---

• cursing, Diamond, GHK Lall, oil, Thanksgiving

---