The recent dismissals of Professor David Hinds and Mr Lincoln Lewis have not displaced the foremost news event in Guyana, this being the giveaway of Guyana’s oil patrimony. What the terminations have highlighted is how politicians attempt to justify indefensible acts, by using dishonourable, mendacious or facetious statements.
The utterings by politicians to logically define the indefinable and explain the inexplicable, such as the US$460 million giveaway to Esso Exploration & Production Guyana Limited (EEPGL), a subsidiary of ExxonMobil, amounts to weak and ineffectual gestures to deceive the Guyanese people. Over the last two years the several servile writings of Working People’s Alliance members, David Hinds and Tacuma Ogunseye to greenwash the current government, has degraded their admirable soldiering with Dr Rodney in the 1970s, under the banner of the WPA. Mr Lincoln Lewis has not varied half as much in his media offerings, which tend to be tepid and insufficient. All these individuals have co-joined to accuse the PPP of worse misdeeds, while at the same time, respectfully serving mild criticisms of the current government.
As William Francis Buckley said, “I will not insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you said”. This quote is most applicable as a response to claims made by Guyana’s oil politicians and the Editor-in-Chief of the Guyana Chronicle to justify decisions relative to the petroleum agreement and the termination of Hinds and Lewis. Ex-President Desmond Hoyte once referenced a PNC colleague as a “creature of the party”; truer words were never spoken when it comes to party politics and the paramountcy of party leaders.
In Guyana, we have Ministers and such like, wandering around Guyana making final declarations on a petroleum contract that is illegal and unconscionable; now we have an Editor-in-Chief, claiming a party edict as his own; and these are all intelligent men.
We have the members of a Chronicle Board that so enjoy their role that instead of resigning en masse from the Guyana Chronicle Board of Directors to distance themselves from the disgraceful and irrational dismissals of Hinds and Lewis, prefer to split and twist words. What we really need are persons in the hierarchy of leadership who have the courage and strength to insist on the renegotiation of the unholy Petroleum Agreement. There are options in the marketplace that by far, are not as disgraceful and not as dishonourable.
Nigel Hinds
March 22nd, 2018