Dear Editor,
I expected that the Editor-in-Chief of the Stabroek News would staunchly defend his newspaper’s Editorial arguing that our government should force ExxonMobil into agreeing to renegotiate the 2016 Production Sharing Agreement (PSA).
In his response to me, the Editor-in-Chief offers as grounds for our government forcing ExxonMobil into renegotiations that “ExxonMobil literally forced Guyana in 2016 to renegotiate the Extant Agreement”. The Editor-in-Chief chooses to ignore the point I made in my letter “that 2025 is not 2016” and that, since 2016, our country has palpably advanced its development and has tremendously benefitted from the resources flowing from that very Agreement. Any government acting so foolishly would drag the country into a legal battle lasting years, wholly compromising the benefits so far gained and with an entirely unpredictable result.
What I did not expect was for Christopher Ram to deliberately misinterpret the final paragraph of my letter in which I state that any attempt to renegotiate the contract “would be a prescription for losing the election”. Ram, dishonestly, attempts to claim that this somehow represents the government’s position, when, in fact, it was obvious that I was responding directly to the Stabroek News Editorial’s proposal that “it is not inconceivable that some party could contest the 2025 election on this single issue – renegotiation of the contract”. Indeed, I expressed the view that I found this suggestion amusing and went on to ask “are the owners of the Stabroek News contemplating entering into politics?”
Needless to say, the Stabroek News falsely headlines Ram’s letter “Nascimento clarifies that the President’s position on renegotiation was not about contract sanctity but rather electoral calculations”. Words that not even Ram used in his letter.
Sincerely,
Kit Nascimento
