One of the stark realities Guyanese must confront is that the PPP and PNC have both confirmed that they will not renegotiate the Exxon contract, and both are willing to forego the estimated US$1.5-2.5 billion of your money every year until the cessation of operations in the next 25 to 50 years. Based on information in the report on the natural resource fund published by the Bank of Guyana for September 2024, with Guyana’s share of Profit Oil amounting to US$4.7 billion since production began, the PPP by not renegotiating the Contract, has agreed to forfeit US$2.3 billion (shown in the adjacent table) of your money in income taxes Exxon should be paying, but is not. This excludes amounts expended by Exxon in the absence of ring-fencing to finance additional exploration and related expenditures. The PPP has cost Guyanese approximately US$2.3 billion in oil revenues.
The indignant unwillingness for both the PPP and PNC to renegotiate the Exxon contract, more akin to ramming it down our proverbial throats even as we elected them both, and both are paid by our income taxes to represent us in the management of all of our natural resources, can lead to only one conclusion: both the PPP and PNC are working for Exxon. As much as they would not admit that they are receiving money in a personal capacity from Exxon, there can be no other conclusion but that the PPP and PNC are on Exxon’s payroll.
Even as we digest our reality that the PPP is really giving Exxon billions of our money, they, after having been embarrassed a few weeks earlier that the estimated billions, which has been shown to be US$2.3 billion to date, sought to save face by announcing the G$200,000/household grant, approximate US$1,000 to every household, now reduced to US$500 for adult Guyanese, inclusive of those living abroad. The terms of reference for the now $100,000 grant to adults was obviously to bolster its sagging political image. Since it seems that there seems no end to the barrel of money from which the PPP is sharing out money, the DNC wishes to ask the PPP to consider re-engineering the policy focus of the upcoming disbursements so that it responds more to poverty considerations where we all know that between 280,000 and 420,000 (approximately 40-60% of the population) are either in poverty or living in conditions of severe financial insufficiency. If we estimate that Guyana has about 14,000 children (based on annual student enrollment) from ages 1 through 17, then 50% of the total number of 238,000 children across this age group would be 119,000 children, a proxy for the number of poor children in the country. Alternatively, government can really help its image by paying out $50,000 for all children, whether in school or not. The we fail to see why the PPP administration is sharing money out to Guyanese abroad who would most likely be given a reason to come back home for a vacation and collect the 200,000 to 500,000, or $100,000 for every returning Guyanese as spending money, when poor children are more in need of it. We urge that government considers this and adopt our proposal to distribute grant funds under the more sober policy of poverty alleviation even as many of our children continue to underperform at schools because of poor financial conditions at home. Since this is just a one-off payment, we suggest $50,000 would go a far way to ease financial stress this Christmas Season and help with preparing for school in the new year.
In the political context, the PPP lost the 2015 elections because Guyanese had had enough of their corruption and malfeasance in public office. They are back in office because the PNC showed us all that they had learnt nothing since losing in 1992. They remained incompetent, and exhibited discriminatory behavior towards traditional PPP supporters by their willful mismanagement of Guysuco and ill-treatment of sugar workers. But the larger issue here is do supporters of the PNC think it is right to victimize and marginalize traditional supporters of the PPP? The fact is the PNC has enshrined in its political culture the marginalization of supporters of the PPP, even as the PNC has demonstrated little care or consideration for their own supporters, or any other class of voters for that matter. The more traditional supporters of the PNC back their party, the stronger will be the support for the PPP.
There is a solution (www.dncgy.com). That is for PNC supporters to realize and understand that the PNC has been the source of Guyana’s economic problems, its ethnic insecurities, the massacre of the livelihood of Stabroek Market vendors immediately after the 2015 elections, in keeping Guyanese impoverished by not investing in agriculture and supporting the adoption of cannabis sativa as a commercially viable agricultural crop that could return billions of United States dollars to Guyanese in exports, in keeping hundreds of African Guyanese men incarcerated for marijuana, their families suffering the consequences for their unnecessary incarceration, because to adopt a progressive stance on marijuana would have made many African Guyanese financially independent, versus forever hopelessly hoping and looking towards the PNC for bread crumbs. And with that understanding, knowing that PPP supporters are also tired and fed up of the corruption, poverty and insufficiency dished out by the PPP since 1997, start befriending and forming strategic alliances based on trust with them, where both major sections of our society recognize that our common problems have no solution in either the PNC or the PPP, but with starting and building a new party to represent them in government, to represent them and take office in 2025. With billions of United States dollars at stake, we will have to answer to our children after elections day 2025.
Craig Sylvester,
Party Leader, DNC.