Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo has little time for diplomacy, and he was in characteristic form in his press conference last week. One notable feature of his most recent encounter with reporters was that it ensnared an outsider in the form of Mr Alistair Routledge of ExxonMobil Guyana. It is no doubt the first time that Mr Routledge has found himself directly embroiled in the quagmire of Guyanese politics.
It is one of those stories about who said what to whom. It was AFC MP David Patterson who first revealed that the opposition had been told in a meeting on September 8 with Mr Routledge that the government had agreed to the reduction of IHS Markit audit’s questionable expenses figure from US$214 million to US$3 million. His statements were disputed by Mr Jagdeo, which in turn prompted the five opposition members who were present at the meeting to record what was said there in writing.
The members concerned are Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton, AFC MPs David Patterson and Ricky Ramsaroop, PNCR MP Shurwayne Holder and opposition economics advisor Elson Lowe. In a letter published in this newspaper yesterday the five wrote: “In the said meeting ExxonMobil said that they agreed with the government to US$3 million because it was too time consuming to continue to go through all the information and reduce it further. He went on to state that they have all the information on their expenditure.”
For his own part Mr Jagdeo during his press conference was adamant that this was not true. According to him, President Irfaan Ali had been informed by ExxonMobil that it never told the opposition the IHS Markit audit’s questionable expenses figure had been reduced from US$214 million to US$3 million and that the government had agreed to this. He also said that it was during a meeting of Cabinet that the President had called Exxon and had received this response. This produced perhaps the not unexpected rejoinder from Mr Patterson that he did not believe anything the Vice President said.
So either Mr Jagdeo is lying, or the five opposition members are lying. If five people are lying in concert, that would constitute a conspiracy of sorts, which is highly improbable in this particular instance given all the details of the exchange they have supplied. So is Mr Jagdeo lying? His position might be strengthened if the President and other members of Cabinet backed him up, depending on what the company actually said, always assuming, of course, a telephone conversation with it actually took place.
If what was relayed to Cabinet by President Ali corresponds to Mr Jagdeo’s contention, then that would leave ExxonMobil exposed. It is theoretically conceivable that it gave a denial to President Ali given the questions about the reduction being asked in the public arena, even though that did not reflect the reality, but whatever the case, the five opposition members and Mr Jagdeo can’t both be right.
It is not a situation the oil company would want to find itself in, and not surprisingly, therefore, it has had nothing to say on the matter and could not be reached for comment by this newspaper. The opposition is of the view that it should make its position public, but it is reasonable to suppose that it will avoid doing this if at all possible in the hope the matter will blow over. Whether or not Mr Jagdeo has represented correctly what was said to the President, it will not want to clarify anything.
While this might seem something of a side issue to the main scandal relating to the reduction in the IHS Markit audit figure of disputed expenses illegally negotiated at some level in the Ministry of Natural Resources, it does have bearing on the central issue. That the opposition was told by ExxonMobil – and it must be presumed their assertion they were told is correct ‒ is indicative of great confidence on its part that a legitimate and final agreement had been reached with the government on the IHS Markit audit sum of disputed expenses. It will no doubt be much more cautious about what it reveals to the opposition in the future, an approach the government will definitely endorse.
As for the Vice President, there is little he can say about the larger issue of the reduction which is a source of enormous embarrassment to a government that is constantly broadcasting its superior talents in the management of the economy and of the oil sector in particular. At the same press conference he referred to APNU, “which meandered its way through five years not focused on anything.” It cannot make it any easier that it was the coalition government, in fact, which retained IHS Markit to undertake the audit. Challenging the opposition in relation to being told about the reduction, allows him a little space to distract from the central issue and castigate them on what he alleges is their lack of veracity.
In the end, as we have argued in previous editorials, the entire question of how and at what level the IHS Markit audit sum of disputed expenses was negotiated is in need of an independent inquiry, something which the government appears determined to avoid.
If such were held, then all the ancillary issues too would come under scrutiny.
