By GHK Lall
The PPP Government must be given credit for coming up with what could only be described as criminal. When I speak of the PPP Government, that means mainly the one figure that towers over and commandeers its members; the rest don’t count. If he is given free passage, his ultimate objective is to enslave and subject all the peoples of this nation to his deceptive will. This is the evidence of criminally inclined masterminds at work in what was presented in Guyana’s Parliament on Thursday, as it relates to proposals for this country’s Natural Resources Act. When the abomination was unveiled in the National Assembly, it became clear how Government leaders spent an enormous amount of time to come up with what gouges Guyanese of their rich gifts. It is of how much energy is dedicated to what destroys the hopes of the people, through what is being put in place, with what will take away from Guyanese and enrich leaders and their comrades.
From my perspective, take away the shields of protective committees, with the speciousness and lameness of complexity and claimed cumbersome natures, speak to minds working overtime on how to strip away layer by layer that what stands as restraining mechanisms. It is where the check and balance bulwarks erected as defenses for the poor are attacked with vigor and reduced to shambles; what is there to offer the empty-handed in Guyana some hope goes because scoundrels in the PPP Government are always figuring out ways to be rid of legal obstacles.
When control systems are diligently targeted and removed, in time, there is nothing left to stop those bent on cheating citizens and impoverishing them. It is of people robbed with their eyes open, and before their faces, through cunning leadership concoctions. It calls for a special kind of thinker to come up with this quality of deviousness, but what came to pass on Thursday in the National Assembly is the defining feature of what we have today. I say damn the concoction of a shackled board beholden to the whims of one man. And I doubly damn the dastardliness and trickiness embedded in the proposed formation of that investment committee; as replacements they will be no more than criminal scabs. I foresee EPA-like presences: toothless and spineless, the essence of impotence, for their works will be of what is destructive to the welfare of Guyanese.
This has to be the reaction of honest, thinking, and principled Guyanese. In the removing of what is there and replacing the sum of it with cherrypicked men to do leaders’ bidding, there is the first evidence of a recipe for criminality and tragedy on many fronts. There would be no regulatory restraint, but only the caprices of leaders, one man’s really.
Let there be no mistake, these replacement proposals of a board (rigged for specific outcomes), an investment committee (skewed to government’s advantage) are marked cards, a big, crooked deck. My thinking is that Guyana will be pillaged again. Should this become the law, and it looks all but foregone, I warn from now that Guyanese will pay a steep price. These removals and replacements bode ill for Guyanese.
The fruits of this could be social and environmental tragedy first, and national tragedy following closely. It is called growing instability and insecurity. No Guyanese can sit unstirred and swallow what seeks to cheat them, to denude them of their long-awaited potential. Not when another plank in their coffins is being nailed so swiftly and smartly in parliament to bury them and gut them of the prosperity that belongs to them. Let this stand, and there would be nothing left to stand for, nothing to hope for, nothing to dream of; for this would be the beginning of more such leadership atrocities. It must be stopped dead, or it could be the death of us.
For no matter how dressed up and defended, these proposals are but another example of wanton, uncontrolled leadership haughtiness, of going too far, taking Guyanese for docile fools. Instead of focusing on easing the stranglehold of rapacious foreigners on Guyana’s riches, leaders in the PPP Government comes up with these ambitions on how to rip-off their fellow Guyanese. The Government allows Exxon and company to run amok here, no effort is made to slow them down, to twist their arm, or to thwart them. In contrast, PPP leaders in government, then come from the other end, with these deceptive parliamentary rabbits designed to mislead Guyanese.
This is not the handiwork of the messenger minister making the parliamentary presentation, nor that of the President himself, since together they fall way short of the unequalled craftiness of the one who is the real leader, whose vision is what matters. The President’s role is to make big speeches with bigger promises, and after that he bows before the biggest man in the PPP Government. He is the one with the biggest hidden agendas. They are not good for Guyanese. Examine the record, and whatever he lays his hands on is cursed with leprosy and wretchedness. As he is cursed for his shenanigans, this society pays the price, becomes more embittered
Take a moment and look at us: petroleum laws need to be modernized, rules implemented and enforced, yet the PPP Government concentrates ferociously on diminishing the little laws we have, and diluting regulations. This Government now makes a living, through demolishing methodically what protects for its dirty ambitions. These proposals, this parliamentary repugnance, must not stand. Let a start be made somewhere to combat this creeping government criminality.
