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The A Partnership of National Unity (APNU), in a statement issued over the weekend, said Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo must be immediately removed from handling the nation’s oil and gas resources. The partnership said Guyanese are alarmed over the news of the government’s flagrant and scandalous mishandling of the audit of ExxonMobil’s expenditure for the period 1999 to 2017. They flayed the explanations offered by Minister of Natural Resources Vickram Bharrat and VP Bharrat Jagdeo, saying such “at best expose their ineptitude and dereliction and, at worse, point to probable criminality.”
According to the partnership, any responsible person with a modicum of common sense would, on receipt of a report on the slashing of ExxonMobil Guyana Limited’s questionable expenses from US$214M to US$3M, seek further information or clarification on the matter. “But not VP Bharrat Jagdeo. He informed the nation that he accepted the report at face value and had no concerns and sought no explanations. This is negligence and malfeasance of the highest order.”
Going further, APNU noted “but worse, such negligence and malfeasance could lead to the loss of billions of dollars of public funds.” Warning that Guyana has travelled this road before with VP Jagdeo, evidence of this was pointed out in the Skeldon Sugar factory modernisation project, the Fibre Optics Cable project, and Su-gate “(to name a few) have starkly exposed his incapabilities.” He is out of his depth, the partnership charged and “the nation distrusts him.”
APNU therefore calls for the immediate removal of Bharrat Jagdeo from the handling of all the country’s oil and gas matters, stating “Enough is enough!”
The Partnership said the matter will be addressed more at its next press conference. The conference is usually held on Thursday.
