Dear Editor,
It hit me like a ton of bricks, or rather, like an oil tanker laden with a million barrels of Guyana’s crude oil, that the preposterous claim that “34 is the majority,” was in fact an attack on the institution that makes laws in Guyana, the National Assembly. Later, the decision to prosecute this claim in Guyana’s courts, constituted another attack, this time on the country’s judicial institutions, which exist to administer justice in the country by interpreting and applying the law. The latter decision, to prosecute the “34 is the majority” claim was an attack on the country’s judicial institutions precisely because it asking the courts to pronounce, in a politically charged environment, on a claim that was absolutely preposterous.
Taken together, it would appear to me – now recovering from a massive concussion – that these two attacks were effectively the most indecent attacks on Guyana’s Constitution that occurred in recent history.
But as Guyana’s oil exports are about to begin, we urgently need our institutions to develop some muscle. Without wanting to be too explicit about this, Guyana needs a strong set of regulatory and law-making institutions to design and implement a tax – the very carbon tax that ExxonMobil supports – on the crude that is extracted by the operator.
When I used to teach Principles of Economics, my students would learn that the effect and the burden of a tax would be the same, were it levied on consumers or producers. This is the same argument that would support an “upstream” carbon tax on crude oil lifted from the Stabroek Block.
The only question would be whether the carbon in Guyana’s crude is “petroleum-related” or not, and this is where we’d need a strong set of judicial institutions.
Yours faithfully,
Thomas B. Singh
