Do you know what KLEPTOCRACY is? The A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) is on a fast-track to establish a kleptocratic dictatorship. Oil is at the centre of the APNU/AFC kleptocracy. The daily staple of lies, misdirection and obfuscation are significant elements in the recipe for implementing APNU/AFC’s kleptocracy plan.
This past week, Minister Patterson, the Public Infrastructure Minister, shamefully lied when he told the nation that former President Bharrat Jagdeo, had “given away all the available blocks for oil exploration in Guyana”. Minister Patterson was responding to concerns widespread in Guyana that APNU/AFC is pursuing a sickening policy of issuing available blocks for oil exploration to companies without any experience and any resources, companies that include relatives and friends of APNU/AFC politicians. As the Leader of the Opposition cautioned, there is a rush to establish these local companies which will then turn around and sell their shares and interests to international companies, without any tendering and for huge profits. None of these profits will benefit Guyana.
Almost instantly, it became pellucidly clear that Patterson knowingly lied. The Guyana Geology and Mines Commission has a map that indicates all the possible oil blocks, those that have been assigned to a known entity, such as EXXON, REPSOL, CGX etc, and those still available. The map makes clear that significant acreage and numbers of blocks are still unassigned. This is not a secret map. It is public property and well-known to many people. We also know this very APNU/AFC Government earlier this year gave out one of the blocks to an international consortium. We are aware that a number of the new companies have been requesting grants of oil blocks from the Natural Resources Ministry. It was a brazen lie. Minister Patterson needs to apologise to the Guyanese people. His disrespect, however, was designed to misdirect people away from a classical kleptocratic policy and focus attention on their favourite bogey man, Jagdeo.
Earlier, Minister Trotman had just as brazenly lied when he informed people that he and APNU/AFC are prohibited from making the EXXON contract public because Bharrat Jagdeo had inserted a secrecy clause in the Petroleum Act through an amendment in 1997. First, Jagdeo was not the President in 1997, Sam Hinds was. Second, the 1997 amendment, far from inserting a secrecy clause, made it possible for the Government to publicise any oil contract. It was a lie to misdirect people, just as Patterson was trying to misdirect and obfuscate the issue. As they are exposed and caught with their pants down, they offer clumsy and reprehensible defence.
Oil can be a positive game-changer for Guyana. But the way APNU/AFC is managing this game-changing national asset is plunging Guyana into a mess. It is not a secret that BIG OIL is the Wizard of Corruption, the worst example of corruption and thievery in the history of human kind. The examples are all around us, in the US, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, Ecuador, Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, the Equatorial Guinea, Russia, Indonesia and many other countries. Global Witness, a global NGO which monitors corruption in the oil industry, has documented the many horrifying examples around the world. This is why so many of us are worried that far from improving the economic and social conditions of Guyanese, oil might very well impoverish us even more, just as we see in Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, Uganda and Ghana.
Minister Gaskin, the Business Minister and son-in-law of President Granger, chides us for our pessimism, saying that the AFC is not bribable and, therefore, will ensure that big oil will not be able to impose its legacy of corruption and expose Guyanese politicians to allure and temptation. It has not escaped us that most of the lies being peddled about oil are being peddled by AFC leaders, like Trotman, Ramjattan, Nagamootoo and Patterson. Far from assuring us, the behaviour of APNU/AFC is signalling a nightmare for Guyana.
Instead of pursuing policies and actions that will optimise the benefits of oil for Guyana, APNU/AFC is at the centre of a horrifying con-job, lying, misinforming, misdirecting and obfuscating about oil. The secret one-on-one negotiation for oil blocks off-shore and on-shore in Guyana with companies that are closely linked to politicians with power is the hallmark of the kleptocratic legacy of oil. While there is no single answer, transparency and accountability can be a powerful tool to stop kleptocracy. The Leader of the Opposition has suggested a public auction for assigning available blocks. The World Bank and other international organisations, the EU etc, have all supported public auctions. Will APNU/AFC support public auction?
