If the government goes ahead with a secret contract they should expect a court challenge
Dear Editor, This notion of one man on behalf of a government signing a contract with a foreign company essentially transferring the rights to a nation’s natural resources for 30 years is absolutely ridiculous. A lack of involvement of the people’s representatives in the parliament does not happen in a democracy in the year 2017.
President Suharto of Indonesia did it in 1961, but that was a different era. But President Granger initialling an amended contract originally signed by a PPP/C president doing the same thing in 2017? Aren’t we living today in a more enlightened age, in a country that claims to be a practising democracy?
Does the GoG realize ExxonMobil has already quantified Guyana’s billion barrel oil reserves in dollars (they are called book reserves) and entered the dollar amount as assets on their balance sheet? And their stock price is maintained by these book reserves?
We need ExxonMobil as much as they need Guyana’s oil reserves. But we need a fair and transparent contract. ExxonMobil had a battery of seasoned lawyers and chartered accountants to negotiate a contract on their behalf. Whom did the GoG have? Who were the lawyers and accountants of Guyana’s negotiating team? Guyanese people have a right to know. Parliament has the constitutional right to review and ratify this contract, without which the contract should be invalid.
An instructive note from Steve Coll’s book on ExxonMobil (page 417) regarding the attitude of ExxonMobil on the sanctity of contracts says: “EM’s vocal stance about contracts had a pragmatic aspect; it was a form of bargaining by deterrence . . . If it renegotiated contracts in one country, others would surely take notice and might exploit the opening”. The message is clear. Get the contract right now; EM would not agree to amendments later. And the life of the contract is 30 years.
If Minister Trotman insists on going ahead with the secret contract, he and his government should expect a court challenge
Yours faithfully, Mike Persaud