OPINION: Renegotiation referendum: Exxon shivers, Jagdeo delivers

Last Updated on Thursday, 31 October 2024, 21:11 by Writer

By  GHK Lall

When Demerara Waves asked the question, the strangest of answers resulted. A referendum with 14-20 parties expected to contest next year’s elections “will further complicate the entire process and this should be avoided.” Avoid a referendum, Bhar-rat Jagdeo will, as if his life depended on it. Truth be told, his political life does, and given what has occurred in that, there is no telling what develops in his post-political life. His own life could get very “complicated” considering its many tricky strands.

Complicated is what Mr. Jagdeo rests his objection to a referendum on renegotiation of Exxon’s nationally insulting oil contract. How does one question asked of Guyanese voters complicate the process to such a knotty degree? To renegotiate or not to renegotiate? That’s all. It seems that from Jagdeo’s perspective, GECOM is a whale trapped in a catfish that is really a banga-mary. It is potent, but it is limited. It has reach, but its brain is frozen. GECOM can do many things, but one thing is a no-no, just too complicated to be done. I look at this referendum issue, and ask how much more complicated can it get? Currently, the ballot paper has two elements. The first has to do with a selection for president. The second gives the potential voter a slate for the regions. How complicated is it, in the present context, to insert a single question pertaining to a referendum on renegotiation of the 2016 Exxon oil deal? In my view, this most burning of national issues, this existential (if I may) oil referendum question distils to less than one line, with two choices. Here it is.

‘Are you in favor of renegotiation of the 2016 Exxon oil contract?’ The two choices are: YES or NO. To make the referendum issue much simpler, more convenient, I would remove two other boxes/choices. They are “UNSURE” and “MAYBE.”  How does a one line question of exactly a dozen words make the 2025 elections complicated, I beg to ask Mr. Jagdeo? What is there about such a question, the essence of simplicity and brevity itself able to “further complicate the entire process”, my good sir? I think Daktah Jagdeo just made the process “further complicated” because it feathers his nest. It does not tamper with where he stands. To allow a referendum to take place is to endanger his place on the oil throne, to interfere with the firmness of his seat of power itself. Exxon would not take too kindly to a referendum, when the probability of its perils are so high, and so obvious. It is why, being the smart as a whip chap that he is, Jagdeo added that innocent sounding phrase, therefore, “this [business of a referendum] should be avoided.” I would, too, if I were in his shoes. But I could never be, since my way is not as curly, nor as twisty, as Jagdeo’s. It is why he is always swaying in the wind, going from side to side, or backwards and then downwards. Imagine a question about a referendum on renegotiation could succeed in bringing out the survivor’s instincts in Guyana’s chief oil impresario.

Not being one to leave any loose ends when his own interests could be under the microscope, Dr. Jagdeo went further. The presence of 14-20 political parties transforms the 2025 elections into a big snake with many heads. He has to tell that to idiots, bona fide mental cases. Daktah Jagdeo must have convinced himself that all Guyanese are sick. For one, other than the PPP and the PNC and, to a different extent, the AFC, all those other parties don’t count for a damn. Given that most of them from the 2020 crop turned out to be PPP (Jagdeo) plants, Guyanese have lost trust in all those who went back on their all but sworn commitment not to join with the PPP or PNC, only for them to do just so. Interested voters should check for themselves to see how the people they voted for in those so-called small, fresh, independent parties have done very well for themselves, thanks to Jagdeo’s gifts and nudges. From parliament to boardrooms, there they are, happily consuming Jagdeo’s incentives. On the other hand, a new political party that is all about oil, and only about oil (with clean governance, constitutional freedoms and so forth, also featuring prominently), and with credible Guyanese presences, now that could be one hell of a difference maker. At least, I foresee a spoiler, if that party were to make oil and the thrust for renegotiation its entire platform. Such a presence would possess greater than even odds of making things more complicated, even becoming Mistah Jagdeo’s waking, walking, wounding nightmare. For such a political group would be openly and fiercely calling for, insisting on doing, what causes fits in the PPP and PNC and AFC. Renegotiation of the obscene Exxon oil deal. A deal that is a disease on Guyanese. A deal that the major political parties are mortally afraid to challenge. To my fellow Guyanese, this I say: their fear paralyzes them. Their ambitions emasculate them. Whatever understanding that the major political parties may have with Exxon, there is one nonnegotiable component. Any development, anything (large or small) that is harmful to Exxon’s interest is dead in the water. Jagdeo must see to it. He just did. A referendum would ‘complicate the process, should be avoided.’ Jagdeo complicated it more than it is. He will avoid it (the referendum).