Hide and seek

Dec 28, 2025 Editorial, News

(Kaieteur News) – When a government’s leadership makes it a pillar of operation to hide vital developments from citizens, it energizes suspicion. When the seeking of official documents leaves citizens empty-handed, trust starts to fade, and the more that the hiding continues, the more that distrust of motives solidifies. In tandem with propaganda, the PPPC Government has made concealment into a standing practice, an art form. When questioned, the leadership either responds with silence or mouthfuls of abuse. It depends on the day, the mood of the leader, and the potential exposures that would arise should much-sought after documents are released into the public domain.

There is a completed audit of ExxonMobil’s expenses, US$19.6B in cost recovery claimed, and the nation is left to wonder what the auditors found that has to be kept sealed. What are the findings, the quality of the audit itself, that those must remain under lock-and-key? Almost two-thirds of a year has elapsed, since the VHE Consulting audit consortium finished its work, and the public remains in the dark. What could be so dangerous to ExxonMobil’s interests, or put the PPPC Government is such a precarious place, that this audit report has to be withheld? What is in that audit report that has to be massaged, negotiated, and doctored, that the VHE consortium’s work cannot see the light of day? How much longer will Guyanese continue to ask and seek, and the report remains under the tightest government guard? No one knows, but a nervous government, and that could mean as much as three months more, maybe even another seven months into 2026.

The nation has been told that the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) is busy doing its oversight part, through a ‘technical review.’ The GRA has complained repeatedly about its severe staff shortage that hampers its work in the crucial oil sector. We acknowledge that, and recognize the impact that shortage could have on what’s called a ‘technical review’ of the fieldwork done by VHE Consulting consortium. Also, an audit report involving ExxonMobil’s expenses (cost recovery claims) for the period 2021 to 2023, and the massive sum of US$19.6B, must be voluminous and tedious, if nothing else. A cost recovery claim of US$19.6B takes Guyana and the GRA into new territory, i.e., trillions of Guyana dollars, an unimaginable sum, and one that stretches the minds of even educated Guyanese. Nevertheless, the current delay of close to two-thirds of a year is both unconscionable and, by any standards, unacceptable.

In the hide-and-seek game, delay and deflect culture, now practiced by the PPPC Government, it does not do the nation, ExxonMobil, or itself any favors. Because Guyana’s oil partner itself has compiled a record of foot-dragging and stonewalling with prior audits, Guyanese are asking themselves, what is it that the company may have done with its 2021-23 cost recovery submissions that necessitates this ducking and delaying. The nation is starved, if not tricked, relative to information that Guyanese need to know, which leads to continuing speculations about what could be behind this delay. Meanwhile, the PPPC Government looks worse and worse, when it continues to go down the we hide-and-you-seek games that it presides over.

President Ali who usually has much to say on what is helpful to his government’s standing has been conspicuously missing in action, with little heard from him on this US$19.6B audit report. If this country’s top leader could be so detached on something as big as this multibillion American dollar cost recovery claim, then that only stokes the embers of suspicion and distrust some more. If this was an abnormal instance of government sloth, or incompetency, or malaise (or all three), there could have been some understanding, concession. But not when Guyanese are given a royal runaround in their quest for information, while a law that authorizes such access has been in existence for 14 years. It is one of the most glaring and shameful lapses of the current government. Almost on par, is the census report that has been completed for over three years, but of which results, the nation is kept in ignorance. Cumulatively, the hide-and-seek game of the PPPC Government now rises to the level of an unbreakable constitutional provision.

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Editorial, ExxonMobil, Hide-and-Seek, PPPC Government

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Hide and seek

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