Dear Editor,
I was appalled and angered to read the President of ExxonMobil, Guyana, Alistair Routledge’s answer to a journalist when questioned about whether the 2016 Production Sharing Agreement between ExxonMobil and the Guyana government can be renegotiated.
Routledge, sitting in a country plundered by various European countries, built by the labour of slaves and indentured labourers on land indigenously populated by our local native tribes gave a most colonialist, tone-deaf response. His answer was that renegotiating the terms of an unnegotiated, extremely lopsided contract that overwhelmingly benefits an American company would be detrimental to investor confidence. He had in the past given a different answer about the sanctity of contracts and long-term planning, as though none of those things were changeable, but that is neither here nor there. None of his answers were/are reasonable. How do our leaders on either side of the aisle feel when our people’s patrimony and needs can be dismissed in this manner? Do their consciences not prick them even a tiny bit? Can they not this one time join in unison to condemn that statement and show that we are a proud nation and not one that will be embarrassed in this manner?
The majority of Guyanese are barely eking out a living and one factor of the cost-of-living inflation is the channeling of supplies of goods and services to Exxon’s offshore workers who have the ability to pay higher prices which in turn limits the supply to the average Guyanese who must now cough up what they don’t have to feed their children. Who will represent their interests and their right to their patrimony so they can afford the basic necessities for their children? Who will champion their confidence to provide for their families?
To listen to that awful response which typifies the linear thinking of the privileged and those who grow their wealth off the backs of the coloured poor makes me wish our oil were never discovered because our country is now once more in the hands of greedy, exploitative colonialists and Guyanese only too willing to facilitate it to the detriment of Guyana’s people.
As Mahatma Gandhi eloquently put it, “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not everyone’s greed.”
Yours faithfully,
RK Singh
