Last year May, Ms. Danuta Radzik-Veira filed a writ to stop the gas to shore project. She lost and naturally had to pay cost.

The lady tried once more this year. She lost again last week and has to pay cost again. I haven’t done the research, but I know that all the court cases filed by the anti-oil lobby, it has lost. In relation to unlimited insurance by ExxonMobil which Justice Kissoon ruled in favour of, the amount has been cut down to an acceptable sum on appeal.

The latest legal defeat by the anti-oil lobby brings into focus two questions. One is in relation to the five months of election rigging in 2020. The other is the financial extravaganza of the anti-oil lobby which calls into question the class basis of civil society in this country. Let’s deal with election rigging first.

There may be more than a dozen law suits filed in the court against the oil industry. The plaintiff in one of those cases is the head of the Guyana chapter of Transparency International, Mr. Frederick Collins. Ms. Radzik-Veira and her sister Vanda belong to Red Thread.

Ms. Vanda Radzik-Veira told her interviewer on HARDtalk that Guyana is facing doomsday if the people of Guyana cannot have a say in “how this is to be done.”

Anyone familiar with elementary politics and sociology would tell you that the only time Guyana was facing doomsday was the period, March to July, 2020 when the society was on the brink of collapse and Danuta Randzik-Veira, Vanda Radzik-Veira, Frederick Collins were not part of the campaign to stop doomsday.

The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) was not part of the five-month campaign to stop doomsday from destroying Guyana. Yet a well-known letter writer wants to know why the GHRA is silent on Vice President, Jagdeo’s criticism of Justice Kissoon’s decision on the teachers’ strike.

Some older folks formed a group named Oil and Gas Governance Network in some part of the world named Hollis (where is that I honestly don’t know; I am not a travelling person but it may be in Timbuktu). But this group must have been sleeping which explains why in March to July 2020, they did not form an organisation and name it, “Free and Fair Election Governance Network.”

How do I know this? Because I was part of the campaign and I did not see the presence, read the words and hear the voices of the anti-oil lobby. None of them sought the court’s intervention in the no-confidence motion and the five months of conspiracies to stop a free and fair election.

How and why is doomsday coming because of the oil industry and why there was no talk of doomsday in 2020 when we were in fact close to doomsday? The answer lies in politics. The more than 12 court cases against the oil industry are not about climate change at all. It is about politics.

The silence of the anti-oil lobby, Transparency chapter in Guyana, Red Thread, the GHRA, and others in civil society in March to July 2020 was because these forces had made a political choice back then. They did not want a return of the PPP to power.

The shape of their anti-governmental activism is the court cases against the oil industry. There are two bandwagons in Guyana that are opposed to the government and each one has selected a strategy with which they feel they can weaken the government.

The strategy of the official opposition is race discrimination. The anti-oil lobby’s crusade is to frighten Guyanese with the doomsday scenario that oil is going to create climate disaster.
Both strategies are failing. Let’s look at the wealth of the anti-oil lobby which I wrote a column on recently. I guessed that there are 15 court cases. Legal expenses for the battery of lawyers in each case I would put at $5 million because every loss at the lower court will be taken to the apex court –the Caribbean Court of Justice.

The estimated total sum is $75 million. Can you imagine what that sum could have done if channeled in the right direction? Every country should have an opposition party and a human rights organisation.

If the anti-oil lobby does not want to use their money to help the needy and destitute, then form a human rights body, secure a building and fund a staff. And listen to the complaints Guyanese have about the wrongs done to them by employers, private security companies, the police, the commercial banks, etc…. Then seek to help those complainants. Use that $75 million to help people who need social assistance. Stop giving money to high-priced lawyers and give it to poor people.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.