Ali’s wasted moment, leadership failure

Mar 01, 2026 Editorial, News

(Kaieteur News) – The art of political selling when done well is like a fine wine. There is bouquet, texture, and the blending of years and temperatures. The key is selling hard to a point, and being watchful about going overboard.

Unfortunately, President Ali was his usual self when a high-ranking team from ExxonMobil visited Guyana. It was either that he didn’t know better, or his advisers guided him incorrectly, on managing himself in a smartly calibrated manner, and making Guyanese proud. It is a shame to say, but the president didn’t leave with too much choice. He was his usual overenthusiastic self, and handed Guyana on a platter to his ExxonMobil visitors, with his pitch about trust and partnership.

If the ExxonMobil contingent, led by Chairman and Chief Executive, Darren Woods, came here bracing for a fight, it was over before it began. It was over when the president threw in the towel, and studiously avoided any reference to ExxonMobil’s Guyana contract, which should be a textbook on skinning unenlightened amateurs.

The ExxonMobil oil contract, long regarded as a humiliating outrage by many citizens, didn’t feature for a second in President Ali’s highlights. He closed his eyes, shutdown his mind, and whipped up a smooth omelet that was conspicuous for its political froth. The president’s own ruling People’s Progressive Party/Civic was, just a few short years ago, among the leading and sharpest denouncers of the same reprehensive ExxonMobil oil contract. It may make Guyana’s leader uncomfortable before his distinguished cohort of veteran oil masters, but it was he himself, who uttered those unforgettable words now written in the Guyana oil story: ‘Guyana got the wrong end of the stick.’

In our view, President Ali had a golden opportunity before him, which he let slip out of his hands. Since the president has not developed a record for sticking all the time to the confines of protocol, we are wrestling with what made him waste the occasion, and not press the ExxonMobil contingent to do better for Guyana. It is known that there is a palpable reek of fear, or at least anxiousness, when PPPC leaders come face-to-face with senior ExxonMobil officials.

There may never be a group of heavyweights as large and powerful from ExxonMobil, as the one that touched down in Guyana for a week. CEO Woods was there, and so were members of the board, over which he holds the pivotal role of chairman. The moment was there, with the most powerful decisionmakers from ExxonMobil also in attendance. Sadly, the Guyanese man for the moment was lacking what it takes to rise to the occasion. There but not there, a shadow for all the weight that he carried.

This is part of the continuing tragic irony of Guyana, the vibrant hypocrisy that commands and controls so much in the politics of Guyana. The Irfaan Ali-led PPPC Government rarely lets an opportunity go by without bashing the APNU-AFC government that signed the ExxonMobil contract. We are in full agreement with all such postures and actions of the two Ali governments.

We go our own way, however, when influential members of the same Ali administrations cannot bring themselves to say a word about that contract when people from ExxonMobil are around the table of discussion. The Guyana signers (the former APNU-AFC government) of the ExxonMobil contract have earned every line of cursing that any Guyanese who is capable can lash them with. What baffles is why the same passionate postures and heated words are never part of the PPPC Government’s vocabulary when people from ExxonMobil are in the same room, and must be engaged in such hard conversations.

If the contract was repugnant at the time of its signing, it is repugnant all the time. The APNU-AFC Coalition Government was on one side of the signing table that tied-up Guyana’s oil to ExxonMobil for decades.

ExxonMobil was on the other side of a deal that was terrible in its conception, and worse in its execution. ExxonMobil must be pushed to make that contract right for Guyana. President Ali’s failure to bring it up and grapple with Chairman Woods for constructive changes was a failure of leadership, the further sinking of Guyana.

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Darren Woods, Editorial, ExxonMobil, Irfaan Ali, leadership

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Ali’s wasted moment, leadership failure

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