How oil changed everything, then didn't

March 2: Guyana general elections
The results have not been declared pending a recount.

This was supposed to be the year Guyana’s economy grew faster than any other on earth. 

Since 2015, ExxonMobil has discovered an estimated 8 billion barrels of oil in the waters surrounding Guyana, which borders Venezuela. That may mean that the country has more oil per person than anywhere else. Sales of that oil began early this year.

Some Guyanese hoped that oil would renew society. As of recently, only three highways in the country were paved. Four fifths of its university graduates left the country. Its roughly 800,000 people belonged to the second poorest country in South America and killed themselves at the highest rate worldwide.

But the chances that the newly acquired oil fortune will benefit the public look increasingly uncertain.

Guyana had an election on March 2 of this year, in which voters hoped to oust the ruling party, the People's National Congress. But results will now be delayed for months, following repeated allegations of fraud in favor of the current president, David Granger. Formal protests were lodged, and the case has been tangled in the country's legal system. It is now unclear whether an electoral process widely judged to be legitimate will be possible.

The oil market, meanwhile, has collapsed, while the coronavirus pandemic extinguishes the public’s ability to protest.

The Ballot asked Neil Marks, 39, Reuters correspondent in Guyana and until recently the president of the country’s press association, for his impressions of what is happening in Guyana and what people elsewhere might learn from it.

“With COVID-19, oil prices at where they are at, the electoral crisis — it’s like everything has turned upside down in Guyana,” he said. “Oil and gas could be great for us or could be hell for us, depending on what strategies are put in place. If you don’t have a democratic government, then all of that is really lost.”

The interview was conducted by contributing editor Alex Traub. The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What exactly is Exxon’s deal with Guyana? Does Guyana have agreements with other international oil companies, too?

Exxon and its partners have a contract. The first oil find was made in May 2015. The agreement is for a 50-50 profit share between Exxon and its partners and Guyana, after costs are deducted. In addition to that, Guyana receives what the contract calls a 2 percent royalty on “all Petroleum produced and sold.”

They are operating 120 miles offshore, in an area called Stabroek Block. It’s a giant block. They started production on December 20 last year, or thereabouts.

Guyana does not have a marketing person in place as of yet to sell the oil, which is one of the crazy things about the whole arrangement. The government decided on Royal Dutch Shell to sell Guyana’s first three million barrels of oil.

They [the government] said there was a rush to do the agreement because there was a border controversy with Venezuela. [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro claimed our maritime space when we landed oil. So they rushed into this agreement that has been widely criticized because they needed some sort of backing in order to support Guyana in case Venezuela decided to do something stupid. 

How would you characterize the amount of oil discovered in Guyana and its value?

I don’t know that I can do that. I know that it's a lot. Another weird thing about this whole arrangement is that information is not so readily available. Guyanese first learned — and even the media in Guyana — we first learned that Guyana had invited a bunch of companies to bargain to buy our first three million barrels of oil from a Bloomberg report. 

Then when we try to find out, “Well, how much did you sell this oil for?,” nobody wants to say. So the real value of what's out there, we don't know.

We don’t have a general commission that oversees everything that is happening with oil and gas. The man who was advising the president, a very reputable Guyanese man who's worked in petroleum, he was fired after he started asking for the government to produce agreements that the public could see.

What sort of a difference could vast oil wealth make to Guyana?

People do not fully understand what it can do for the transformation of this country.

I live in the region called Region 3. The main hospital is one that is called the West Demerara Regional Hospital. That’s supposed to be the main hospital for my entire region. In terms of population, it’s the third largest region in the country. But that hospital, the emergency section is, I mean, they just don’t have any equipment.

Once I had to carry my mother there to that hospital. They did not have bed sheets. The nurses took curtains and gave that to my mother. There were mosquitoes in the emergency unit where she was being kept. At that same hospital, my mother is diabetic and I would have to take her there every other day, because she had a problem with her foot, so she had to get a dressing. I had to buy my own bandage and take it for the nurses to do the dressing because the hospital did not have any. It is that bad.

The other hospitals would be worse off because that is the main referral hospital in the region. If that one is that bad, you can imagine what the others are. 

Definitely, all of that money can go into trying to fix some of those things. 

Funny enough, the name that most people know for that hospital is Best Hospital, because it's on a road that is called Best.

There’s been much dispute over who will form the government to oversee the expenditure of the oil money. When did that start?

On December 21st, 2018, a no-confidence motion against the government, brought after the opposition charged the government with being corrupt, was put in the National Assembly, which is our parliament. The government was defeated because one of their members voted in favor of the motion with the opposition. The opposition had 32 seats, the government had 33. After the defection of a member of the government, 33 voted for the no-confidence motion.

The Constitution says that if a no-confidence motion is passed, there should be elections in three months. The very next day after that motion, the government agreed that they were defeated and said they would make preparations for elections.

That did not happen. Somebody came up with this brilliant argument that if there's a 65 member House, half is 32 and a half. So you obviously can’t have a half member, because persons are not half. So in order to arrive at half of the National Assembly, you need to round up that 32 and a half. And if you do that to rounding up, you will end up with thirty three. So thirty three would be half of the House. So you need an additional vote to take it to thirty four, and 34 is what would represent a majority in the House [and the number needed to successfully pass a no-confidence motion]. 

I’m not kidding you.

A series of court rulings last year confirmed that the no-confidence motion needed only 33 votes and passed appropriately.

What led to the recent election, and what happened then?

After the international community deemed the government unconstitutional, the president named March 2 [of this year] as the date for elections. 

We were fed up with surprises with this electoral process already, but every time you think it’s over, it’s not over.

Once voting ends and all the votes from polling places are added up, they put out a statement of poll, which is the results of each polling station, and that statement of poll is placed outside the polling station, so everyone can see the results. All of the statements from the cluster of polling stations will now go to someone called a returning officer. That returning officer takes all the statements of poll and he adds them up so that he will get the cumulative total for his district. In tabulating the statements of poll, he is supposed to do that in the presence of political party agents and a whole range of other people. These people include local and foreign observers.

The process in nine regions went smoothly.

The problem came with Region 4, which is the largest voting district in the country [including Georgetown, the country’s capital]. What was produced for the parties was a spreadsheet, which the returning officer claimed represented the numbers on the statements of poll. Nobody knows where the spreadsheet came from to this day. The officials of the elections body started to call those numbers out. The party agents and the observers were like, “Hold on a minute. Where the hell did that spreadsheet come from? Where are you getting these numbers from?” That has not been answered up to this day.

A court ruled that the district had a responsibility to display the statement of poll so everybody could see it. The reporting officer was supposed to project it on a screen, much like you would display a powerpoint presentation. 

After the court ruled, the returning officer said, “Okay, I'll do what the court said.” He set up this thing. He just put up a piece of wood and then threw a cream-looking sheet across it. It was like a shed. They had a projector, but the whole thing was blurred. When the parties asked, “Can you zoom it up so that we can see what it says?,” the excuse was, “Oh, we don't have anybody technical who can do that.” We were left with somebody calling out numbers that nobody could verify whether these were true or not. All the observers again said, “This is fraud, this is not how the system works.”

The elections management body decided we would do a recount. The chief elections officer has given a timeline of 156 days for when this recount will be done. That is absolutely preposterous.

We don’t know what will come next. From the statements of poll, it is very clear who has won the election, but a declaration of those results needs to be made by the elections commission, and unless there is a legitimate vote recount, that declaration cannot be made.

We’re seeing the pandemic encourage authoritarianism in countries like Hungary and the Philippines. With accusations of a fraudulent vote, is there a fear of the same thing occurring in Guyana?

That is definitely the fear. 

There have been six deaths [from COVID-19] so far and we’ve had 47 cases. There’s a curfew in place from 6 am to 6 pm. Stay home if you don’t have any business on the road. No large gatherings. People have to stay a certain distance from each other.

The virus has certainly stopped anti-government protests. Any massive protest will not happen because the opposition has asked its people not to come out and to follow the guidelines that have been put in place by the health authorities. 

When they come up with this recount plan, you would obviously need certain arrangements to facilitate it. The elections commission will now obviously need approval for those arrangements from the government. It remains to be seen whether that approval will come or not.

People are just at a loss as to what will happen next. We don't have a government. The fear is, Will an illegitimate government handle this COVID-19 crisis? Is a caretaker government the one to really manage it?

What will determine the fate of Guyana’s democracy? Why, in a broader sense, does the threat to democracy matter?

Particularly about elections in Guyana, it’s been very important for Reuters to carry many stories. I believe that the fact that international outlets carry what's been happening with the elections is important to help with the democratic process. That international pressure that has been brought to bear on the government and its actions over the past year and a half has been absolutely needed.

If a government comes to power through a fraudulent electoral process, if they have trampled on people's right to vote, what bearing does that have on people's other rights? Freedom of expression, for example? To my mind, the other freedoms and the other rights that people enjoy come under question if you have a government that doesn't respect people's right to vote, if people’s right to vote has been stolen in a barefaced way. That is the really scary thought — of what other rights could be taken away.

Alex Traub is a contributing editor at The Ballot and a news assistant and occasional reporter at The New York Times.