OPINION: Renegotiation inspiring Guyanese to attack Guyanese

Last Updated on Thursday, 9 January 2025, 23:58 by Writer

By GHK Lall

Tireless national rescue worker Christopher Ram, Esq, ACCA, has attracted slings and arrows; plus, broadsides and blindsides from left, right, and center, from high and low. Whew! The good news is that Live in Guyana remains leashed. Imagine renegotiation causing Guyanese to attack one another viciously over an instrument that all had agreed was and is thoroughly anti-Guyana. I begin with the PNC.

Where does the simple word RENEGOTIATION appear anywhere in its public presentations, positions, releases, strategy papers, white papers, blue papers? Renegotiation, the word only, is so shrunk from by the PNC that it belongs in the category of grey literature. Grey as in grim and hazy. About a hundred years ago, US President Woodrow Wilson had his 14-point plan for a new world order. Today, the PNC came up with 20 for a new Guyana oil order. God himself has Ten Commandments to keep law and order; the PNC has 20 to manage the local oil sector. Though twice as long, nowhere does the word renegotiation appears. Since when has the word renegotiation degraded to a national disgrace?

For its part, a switch was turned on at government heights, and Ram’s head became fair game. Why the morbid fear? Loss of power? At least, get something for Guyanese. At least try; governments run countries, not companies. Today, oil, political loyalty, dollars present Guyanese with an exhibition of the extraordinary: new gradations of prostrations. Proper references cloak the obscene nature of such activity. If today, scripture can be found to rationalize not renegotiating the Exxon contract, then what tomorrow? Some more skillful weaving of words to justify total national surrender? Some twisted interpretation to perpetuate a patented corporate evil? Indeed, there were Americans who had impressive arguments and rhetoric to justify slavery. It’s why I like those old English kings. For all their flaws, they were willing to go on the battlefield and die. Proxies are assigned here. Cumulatively, the Guyana oil story is more than a case study. It is several textbooks in the making. Politics. Economics. Capitalism. And, I say, True Crime.

Given some rationalizations heard, I think that there are Guyanese ready to justify Auschwitz, those who wouldn’t find any evil with General Dyer or Gov Michael O’Dwyer and their roles in the Jallianwala Bagh (Amritsar) massacre. With some in the PPP and PNC, Nelson Mandela would have died in prison; they stand silent while Guyana transforms to a slave state. It is so in patches already, isn’t it? Hence, a whole country sold for mere silver. It is what assaults the mind.

I am embarrassed. Is this the best that Guyanese are capable of: kowtowing before Exxon? I remind all: the white man has always been shredded over slavery, but there were Africans who rounded up their own and sold them for toys. In India, the British prospered because Indian princes allied with them, suppresses their own, sold them out. Guyana is well-advanced towards there, with evidence surfacing daily. Some countries knowingly fight unwinnable wars, if only to slowdown overall collapse. Here there is wholesale handing over of the national patrimony, decapitating national sovereignty, without a finger lifted. Boldness and badness are reserved for domestic pestilences, like Ram.

If this is what oil and the 2016 contract got the PPP and PNC into, then what is it worth? Put this country under the microscope, and it looks like this re Exxon’s contract repugnance. A corpse-cold government, opposition. A prostrate parliament. A largely comatose civil society. A dead spiritual realm. And an impoverished, dependent population. Collaborators proudly live on their knees in homage to Exxon’s monstrosity. With oil, there is no country anymore; only networks of the crawling, leeching.

Holding in abeyance momentarily that Exxon contract renegotiation provision, and provisions under General Contract law, Guyanese must have some fierce spark inside, regardless of their politics. National pride. Some driving moral imperative. Inextinguishable patriotic principle. It says this: ‘I cannot live with this contract, as is. I will not rest while this contract exists in present form. I will not be able to live with myself.’ Here’s a radical thought. Nicolás Maduro covets three quarters of Guyana. Might be worth the effort to meet with him and work out a durable peace. It may be richer for Guyana because Exxon drains this country of more than oil. Exxon has squeezed the manhood out of Guyana’s men, reduced them to impotent eunuchs. Some Guyanese women are fighting without letup. Indomitable spirits that leave in awe. These fearless few, these unbowed, indicate Guyanese still have some heart. They instill pride, expose Exxon’s partners. Women upstaging men.

When a man refuses to stand for his birthright, then he isn’t a man anymore. Not even mouse. I relive the history books of warring tribes who blocked, and the friendly ones who colluded, betrayed. Look at thyself, Guyana. Before oil, Guyanese were impoverished. With oil, Guyanese have advanced past poverty of the belly to bankruptcy of the mind. Character and spirit rarely feature. I watch as a country self-destruct, while much must remain unsaid. Oil hastens the national rot. The richest people statistically are also the weakest intestinally, spiritually.