Let’s read between the lines and say what cannot be said

Dear Editor
Lincoln Lewis’s letter carried on Sunday 25 February in the Stabroek News laments the Governments silence and stance on the matter of the EXXON contract and the public demand, including mine. I stepped back and, as always, rely for explanations from history, while taking a deeper look at all that is going on. I, too, am self employed, and bread and butter gets in the way of applying those hours of going over the evidence to evolve with what seems irrational from very rational people; in this case the APNU-AFC administration, as you indicated that, “Government may very well have justifiable reasons […]” you do understand that there are no freebees in real life in the world we live in over the past hundred years to put a bracket. Things don’t happen from altruism. So let’s read between the lines Lincoln, and say what the Government can’t say.
Two things are going on here, a border dispute and Exxon. It is not by magic that so far a repeat of what happened with the first appearance of EXXON has not so far occurred, that Venezuela by force has not removed Exxon as they did before. I’ve been going over oil and conflict from the time Hitler invaded Russia to Iraq. Oil is not a commodity powerful nations play with. If a not-so-favourable contract enables us to be free of the dooku that Venezuela has placed on our backs, and has used time and time again to intimidate and to economically suffocate us, then so be it with me. We will benefit, and you know as well as I do that we have other important resources that can be tapped into, once the money is available.
If my research is accurate, and I am certain it is — the evidence is glaring before us — should we step back and pay attention? We lost our manufacturing industry because of that border controversy, and the oil crisis of the 70s coupled with our choice in the Cold War politics. In the 80s, I took rice and sugar to trade with Venezuelan traders. One told me in a shop at Morawhanna, the stop before Kumaka, that the border dispute was the Government’s, and that they say “that Venezuela is beautiful without the Venezuelans”. That was before Chavez. They are still fighting ethnic colonisation, but this claim to our Essequibo, though ridiculously porous, is intoxicating political mythology in that country.
Our responsibility may be to explain to our countrymen that we have the best that our country has to offer in leadership, and some hard choices stand before them and us; it’s not as simple as it seems.

Sincerely,
Barry Braithwaite