OPINION: Challenge on oil, and the worst in leaders come out

Last Updated on Sunday, 14 January 2024, 8:12 by Denis Chabrol

by GHK Lall

It took a development that came out of the belly of Guyana’s Opposition to open my eyes, help connect the dots.  Numerous things were wrong, suspect, flawed with the management of this great oil endowment, but somehow, I didn’t strike the nail square.  It has nothing to do with numbers, charts, graphs, or footnotes.  It had everything to do with leaders and their words, postures, actions, reactions, and something indefinable.  Their spirit.  Their soul laid bare.  Their weaknesses exposed for the world to see.  I saw, but didn’t see with the sharpest clarity.  When I say leaders, I speak of all three: President Irfaan Ali, former President Bharrat Jagdeo, and President-in-waiting Aubrey Norton.  Now follow me, and learn, as I use the David Patterson removal and reversal to register a point.  It should emphasize beyond all doubt where Guyana and Guyanese are with this oil.

If I were to call Brother Jagdeo a racist in the public domain, he may shrug, shake his head in denial, hold his arms wide open.  He may even ignore such an allegation.  If he cares, he may utter a dismissive word or two.  But it is unlikely that he would go further in the face of such a denouncement that scars the soul.

If I were to assert that Brother Jagdeo is corrupt in any space, that may get a rise out of him, but he is smart enough to let that go, and to be swallowed up by the rush of events.  Rare would be the day that he spends a minute to engage in shouting or spitting about something that goes to the very heart of his integrity, leadership, and person.

If I were to say that he is vindictive and vicious, with victims and archives to attest, he would ride that tide, and sail along serenely; a man confident in his untouchability, supremely settled in his ascendancy.  If I were to afflict with the worst of insults or derogation, there would hardly be a ruffle.  But talk about oil, and the demons come out and takeover.  For the record, far be it for me to ascribe being a racist, corrupt, or a vengeful man and leader to the same Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, a onetime president for a long time, a current Vice President, and now the President of Policy.  Or to Mohamed Irfaan Ali.  Or to Aubrey Compton Norton.  All that is desired, envisioned, is talk straight and true (and patriotic) about this oil.

Now for the beginning of the story that eluded me, in that it was fleshed out and stretched out and laid out as I do in this instance.  By way of reminder, it took the David Patterson fall and return to usher to the keenest focus.  Call it a belated epiphany.

I talk about oil and Bharrat Jagdeo raves and rants, rails and rouses himself to incredible heights of rage.  For what, my brother?  Oil?  How does a point about interest rate brings out such sinister thunder, lets loose such incredible darkness?  Make a point about oil-quarterly earnings, Exxon’s shareholders largess, Guyanese impoverishment and disappointments-and upend the arguments and pies and bars and candlesticks that are crafted, and the furies of hell are freed.  Traitor. Undisclosed owner.  And more.  I reconnect Guyanese to the groundwork laid: hypothetically brand a man a racist or corrupt or vicious, and there is barely a whimper.  But study the responses, how they flare and sizzle when contrarian points or postures are made about oil.  Has any Guyanese ever seen Jagdeo reach the level of shrillness and sickness that he does when oil is the issue: question, comment, vision, contradiction?

What is going on there with this oil that is so supremely sensitive, that is so sacrosanct?  That is taken so personally, even though presented clinically?  What is it that has gotten hold of Bharrat Jagdeo that he feels that he has to run in front of Alistair Routledge and absorb a blow interpreted as for the American?  Worse still, what is in it for him that he feels compelled to go to war for Exxon and Woods and Routledge?  Why does Jagdeo take it upon himself to try to vanquish any Guyanese (by any means and using any method) who dare to stand up and say: my brother Bharrat, de ile aint gat no clothes…  and Exxon is naked and looking dreadful and wretched….

Clearly, in the heart and soul of Bharrat Jagdeo, he now lives to protect and defend Exxon and its constitution on this oil of ours.  It is now the most precious possession, more than a sacred cow.  More precious than a citizen’s character, a man’s reputation, a leader’s patriotism, a different kind of Guyanese ethos on this blessing that is now a curse.  When a leader of the stature of Bharrat Jagdeo can curse his fellow citizens at the rate that he does, and in the ways that he does, then of what value is this accursed gift anymore?  This is what Alistair Routledge has reduced my people, my brothers, my own to, and it shows.  Good God Almighty!

I could call a man the worst of names, accuse him of the most grotesque attributes, and he hardy flinches.  But go against him on this oil, and it becomes a matter of life and death.  Something went wrong, is wrong.  We all know what and why and how, don’t we?  My fellow Guyanese: is this being read, heard, understood?

I depart with this final word on David Patterson.  He had his troubles, and they came to nothing.  He sounds off on ring-fencing and it is the final solution (politically).  Sanity did return, find a footing.  This is what oil has done to Guyana.  When the extreme worst of Jagdeo wishes to be seen, deal in oil in a way different from him.  Hell flows over most furiously.