THE Alliance For Change has always been a party of individual stars; they rarely have well-coordinated and well thought out policies and political positions.They believe they are each capable of matching and bettering any other politician in Guyana.
They have the tendency of speaking off the top of their head as a substitution for good research and reliable data. Herein lies the affliction of the AFC: they rely on the perceived brilliance of individuals, and their memory/calculations, in most cases, result in lackluster and misinformed response to critical political issues.
Because each of the two or three active top leaders of the AFC is perceived to be otherwise brilliant in their field of professional endeavours, they usually approach public information and political rebuttal in a skimpish, shallow and anecdotal way, usually short on facts.
This approach lacks coordination, research, second thought and depth. As a result, more often than not, their approach is politically reactive; they will continually follow a political agenda dictated by others. I will give several examples. The holding of their weekly press conference on Fridays is, in and of itself, an admission that they do not have and cannot generate content to set political narratives and agenda.
They have to wait and hear what the Vice-President will say on Thursday so that they can slap together a response on Friday.This approach is silly in so many ways; they do not give themselves enough time to conduct deep research and present robust responses. They just shoot off their mouths in the most simplistic, shallow and uncreative manner.
At the AFC press conference this past Friday, the ‘brilliant’ Dr. Adams pontificated that, Guyana’s income from oil will never be 50 + 2 per cent. Because of this tendency to shoot of their mouths at just about anything to try to oppose for opposition’s sake, being true to form, Dr. Adams has conflated the concepts of ‘cost oil’ with ‘profit oil.’
He was rebutting the Vice President’s assertions that in due course Guyana will receive its full share of 50 per cent of revenues. Any little child would understand that the Vice-President was referring to ‘profit oil’ but not Vince. He wanted to dazzle the nation with his brilliance exclaiming that the Vice-President is misleading.
He guesstimated that 30 to 40 per cent of oil will go towards production costs and the difference of 60 per cent when split is no more than 30 per cent coming to the NRF.Dear Dr. Adams, regardless of the size of the deductibles associated with production (cost oil), that which remain represents 100 per cent of “profit oil” which has to be split 50/50.
Further, the two per cent royalty is taken from the gross of production and not an additional two per cent of profit. Therefore, the royalty fee will fluctuate as an overall percentage when juxtaposition directly against profit oil depending on the magnitude of cost oil.For AFC’s lead person on oil and gas to be that callous, careless and shallow in his rebuttal to the most basic aspects of oil and gas is just pathetic, and proves my point about lack of forethought, creativity and coordination in the AFC. Dr. Adams spoke his misinformation so authoritatively and with such confidence but amounted to nothing more than a backward negative.
Dr. Adams got egg in his face by accusing the government of reneging on a promise to re-negotiate the current Stabroek Block PSA. There is no record anywhere of a promise to renegotiate the PSA, it has been a firm and steadfast position of Granger’s PNC and the PPP/C, both in and out of government, to not force renegotiations.It must be recalled that President Granger fired Jan Mangal from his advisory position, in part, because he held views that the agreement should be reviewed.
All the while AFC flipped-flopped on this issue, but one would’ve thought that AFC would be sensible enough to understand that it is shooting itself in the gut by continuing to pursue an issue that has zero political traction and value. Instead of paying close attention to the changes to future agreements and what contributions they can make to improving it, instead they are consumed with non-issues.AFC also embarrassed itself a few weeks ago when they told the nation that the US EXIM Bank did not and could not get approval for the gas-energy project loan in the life of this current US congress.
Again, because they believe they are equal with the gods, it is easy for them to be misled, double-checking is not a feature of the know-it-alls, they latch on to any sliver of information and run to their Friday circus and shout eureka. As it turned out, the loan was fully approved; talk about egg in the face.
As if that is not enough, the AFC further tried to convince us that no feasibility or environmental studies were done for the project. I do not understand why Dr. Adams and the others in the AFC can’t see that this argument is disingenuous and downright silly.
What they are essentially saying to us is that, all the technical experts at the US EXIM bank sat down over a plain application and gave their stamp of approval to blank feasibility documents. They are saying that the same Biden administration that vetoed an IDB shore base loan for a project in Guyana,because it wasn’t satisfied that all the environmental waymarks were present, has now turned around and approved a project that didn’t even bother to run an Environmental Impact Assessment.
They are also saying the US Financial Services Committee chaired by Republican Patrick McHenry and Ranking Member Democrat Maxine Waters, both of whom are known for their strong environment legislative bias, overlooked environmental feasibility issues.
This argument lacks basic understandingof elementary US financial processes. Even more embarrassing for AFC, imagine Exxon, an international business giant, got into partnership with the Gas-to-Energy project without counting the cost. Think about how ludicrous these claims are, but not the AFC ‘experts,’ they will shoot off their mouth anyway.
(Extracted from: What Do You Make of It? GC)
