Vincent Adams: Existential choices

Sep 01, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

When Dr. Vincent Adams was made executive director of the EPA, my perspective on Guyanese political history would have dictated my attitude to the appointment. Several times I have outlined my position on the diaspora’s engagement with Guyana.
I believe that the diaspora has skills to offer this country but I have always added a footnote to that attitude. It must be a skills set that cannot be found among Guyanese who are living and working here. Given our poor economy and level of economic development, I hold firmly to the belief that those who choose not to leave but to share their knowledge with other Guyanese and to endure the disadvantages of living here, we have an obligation to recognize that sacrifice.
This conceptualization of mine is no doubt shaped by my 26 years of teaching at UG. I saw brilliant students, who would excel in any developed country, and 10 years after, I would run into them and learn that they have established themselves in Guyana. They never left. Here now is my essential argument.
If we need a brain surgeon and there isn’t one, then fine, bring in the diaspora Guyanese and pay him his million dollar salary. If we have a brain surgeon here but he lacks the experience of his diaspora counterpart, let us persist with him and train him. I will never abandon this belief. I unhesitatingly support the employment of permanently based Guyanese over those who left and have given the best years of their lives to other countries.
Given my theoretical position, I would argue that a local should have been made head of the EPA and similar bodies. I don’t know Dr. Adams at all so there is nothing personal in arriving at my judgment. The little I know of Dr. Adams was that he spent the greater part of his life working in the US and came back to Guyana after retirement. I am told he is 70 years old or close to that.
There is a controversy brewing about Dr. Adams being sent on leave and there are feelings expressed in the media that he is needed at this time. For the rest of this article, I am not going to offer an opinion on the necessity to have Dr. Adams remain at or leave the EPA neither will I use words of agreement/disagreement with the decision to have him take his leave. My position is purely an academic one in which I will delve into philosophy within the context of existential choices people make.
Dr. Adams belongs to the two highest pillars of the Alliance For Change. He is in the executive committee and part of the management committee which administers the AFC between statutory meetings of the executive body. He was also one of the negotiators in the renewal of the Cummingsburg Accord. His colleague, Dominic Gaskin, who belongs to those two bodies, publicly proclaimed that the 2020 election was being rigged by Clairmont Mingo based on the false numbers Mingo was inserting in his tabulation.
Dr. Adams as a retiree who is financially secure chose not to speak out. Dr. Adams belongs to the leadership of a party that was in the government during the five-month ordeal from March 2 to August 2. Dr. Adams was part of the APNU+AFC outfit that tried to rig the election. The APNU+AFC outfit, to this day, sticks with its belief that it won the 2020 poll. Morally then, Dr. Adams can be seen as part of that cabal that wants to benefit from a rigged election because he has not followed Gaskin’s existential pathway.
A natural question then arises – does Dr. Adams have a moral obligation to denounce the leadership of his party of which he is an essential player, for (1) accepting victory from a rigged election and (2) taking the matter before the courts? At all times, when one is reflecting on the controversy that currently surrounds Dr. Adams, the fact is that he is not just another party member that campaigned for the AFC. Dr. Adams is one of the policy-makers for the AFC who holds one of the most important public positions.
If I had to vote on the continuation of Dr. Adams as head of the EPA, I would mark a ballot in favour of him. But I will first invoke moral philosophy and remind him of his obligations to Guyana. My question to him is: does he believe that his party APNU+AFC won the election therefore is in favour of the election petition it filed in court? If the answer is no, as a major player in the APNU+AFC, is he willing to publicly state, as Gaskin did, that it must acknowledge its defeat?

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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Vincent Adams: Existential choices

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