Dear Editor,
I have honoured before and lived to regret the lapse. In the instance of Chartered Accountant, attorney-at-law, and social activist, there is firm belief that I’m on good grounds to publish this tribute. For the milestone of his 200th oil and gas column. A milestone that takes him into rarified territory, so unique is that achievement.
Two hundred columns of the highest quality, with piercing truths, are the kind of patrimonial revelations that the Guyanese people desperately need. The president and opposition need them. The wider population benefits from that calibre of oil literacy. If only for their own sanity, their potential prosperity suppressed. Sabotaged by their own elected. Mr. Ram’s double century of columns have been about peeling back the dense layers of numbers, then probing professionally and deeply, to unearth gems of profoundness for an information-starved and deceived citizenry. In the process of his reviews, and the sum of his output, a redline becomes prominent for its constancy, its thickness, and its consequences for Guyanese. There they are: the pilots and stewards of the nation’s wealth, slavishly and cleverly committed to doubletalk, double-dealing, and double lives. His numbers do the talking.
Nakedly exposed are those who shout out that the patrimony is for the people, and how they are for the people. It seems that those in the PPP Government and swathes of the opposition are speaking (without actually saying so) for the people from Washington and Texas. This remarkable record of presenting two followed by two zeros of columns on one subject area puts Ram on a pedestal. I say so, even as I remember from my own experiences, my own acquaintance with history and scripture, of those who were held high, only for them to slip down the ladder. A book in 200 chapters is staggering on its own terms. An encyclopedia of oil and gas that highlights foreign corporate trickeries and abuses. A tome that testifies to Guyanese leadership (PPP and PNC) misjudgments and mistakes that cost this country its head and its feet. Plain corporate and political brutality. And then they present weaknesses and betrayals of the PPP elected in their abject submission to the descendants of former colonizers and slave masters. Today, as it was before, they are toasted ahead of the people. I think so; conclude so.
All this wealth and all these failures are identified subtly or sharply by Mr. Ram. Accounting books that have pages missing, or pages that embed the imprints of actions taken and numbers registered that harm the interests of this nation and its nationals. The history of the East India Company repeated on an incredibly larger scale, and on this occasion in what is still nostalgically termed the West Indies. Instead of the British reducing the maharajahs to minions in India, today it is of the Americans rubbing the noses of Guyana’s political masters into the dust and gutters. The new imperial viceroys of oil reap an added advantage. Those whose noses are smeared with the evidence of suspicious brown stuff clap their hands, sing their songs, and praise their jailers. Their body odours waft higher, linger longer.
In his 10 scores of illuminating columns on oil and gas, Mr. Ram has walked an impeccable line. He lays out his points, makes his arguments, and delivers his interpretations. The results are always the same: how Guyanese are fooled, ridden for asses, twice. By their own, then their partners. Through gimmicks and sales pitches. They are of how Guyanese politicians, with few exclusions, are happiest when they sell the dreams of Guyanese for pieces of silver for themselves. Riches sold for a hold on that Holy Grail -power.
Guyanese have been served well in these 200 columns spread over close to a decade. A hard, thankless job that was splendidly done. A gift to Guyana from a son of Guyana. Wishes for Mr. Chris Ram to stay at the wicket, take his stance, and let his pen do the scoring. A triple century of columns, I would recommend. Yes, I know: just found work for him for another two years. No good deed goes unpunished. Ram delivered. I proved.