Please stop insulting the collective intelligence of the Guyanese people.
The facade about putting in place and oil and gas committee and experts to advice the party on oil and gas matters, and that you will have nothing to do with that committee, is nothing but a red herring. Experts don’t make the final decisions in policymaking; it is the political leaders that ultimately make those decisions.
If you are elected President and your so-called“undertaking” that you will relinquish ties from the law firm, of course you will, because that appears to be the mission or the end goal of your client.
What is unfolding here is a potential meddling in Guyana’s domestic politics by ExxonMobil, your client, and obviously, it would be to facilitate Exxon’s wishes if the “forces that be” are ever to succeed in having you installed as President of this dear land of ours. As such, you will not be a President for Guyana, you will be a puppet President for ExxonMobil et.al, thus betraying the Guyanese people and by extension your country.
Accordingly, the concern for all Guyanese to ponder is that should you become the President of Guyana, your clients’ interests will become your number one priorityand/or your party’s interestoverGuyana’s interest.
This is the crux of the matter; you are compromised and therefore cannot be trusted by the Guyanese people to lead Guyana towards advancing the best interest of thecountry and by extension the people of Guyana.
Let me give you a few examples. When the APNU+AFC was in government, they conceded to Exxon’s wishes by not implementing a local content law.
The local content policy that the APNU+AFC drafted, was a policy drafted by an ExxonMobil hired consultant, and it was not a local content policy. It was a foreign policy. Exxon was also opposed to the Gas-to-Energy project (GtE), and the coalition had no intentionsof implementing the GtE. You and David Patterson barefacedly lied about the feasibility study for the GtE. The feasibility study was done under the coalition, and it is a public document. Both of you are well aware of this.
Another good example worth noting is the issue of expert advice that you claim you will rely on. The coalition government that you were a part of, ignored their own expert advice. Case in point, the Commission of Inquiry (COI) into the sugar industry. The COI, headed by none other than Dr. Clive Thomas, which cost the taxpayers $50 million in three months, never recommended the closure of a single estate. Yet, the coalition government completely disregarded the COI recommendations, to pursue their own political agenda, inter alia, the closure of the estates and sacking of more than 7,000 sugar workers, placing their families on the breadline. What was even worse is that your party campaigned on sugar, promising that it will turnaround sugar and that it will not close any estates, that the party had experts from Brazil and other places. Nonetheless, it was the AFC, whenthey were in government that put up the fiercest defense and justification for thatvery callous political decision.
And you have the audacity to attempt once again to seduce voters with the same rhetoric albeit in a different form?
Altogether, the core issue is that you are highly compromised, hence, you cannot be trusted. ExxonMobil, your client, is yet to respond. And as I have demonstrated previously, Exxon has so far violated their own anti-corruption policies and US laws, to finance a political candidate here in Guyana. The whole of Guyana and the world is looking on to see howExxonMobilrespond, whether they will take the necessary actions to come into compliance with their anti-corruption policy, or whether they will ignore and continue to operate as per the norm.
As you continue your disingenuous and insincere campaign, just be mindful that you are insulting the collective intelligence of the Guyanese people, and that they are unlikely to be fooled on this occasion.