Dear Editor,
ON January 7, 2025, the AFC issued a press release responding to one of their former members who challenged their oil-and -gas expert, Dr Vincent Adams.
Instead of dealing with the merits or demerits of the argument, the AFC digressed into an ugly personal attack against their former member, Leonard Craig. According to the AFC, Vincent Adams’ qualifications are superior, and Craig is unqualified to speak or write on the subject. This was quite an unfortunate, nasty and ugly attack on the gentleman, wherein a different level of arrogance on display.

In so far as anyone’s qualification is concerned, to engage in or debate issues on public policy and of national importance, for me the only qualification that matters is being a Guyanese, especially a tax-paying Guyanese. No politician should ever denigrate anyone’s qualifications.
Let me state at the outset that I am also not as qualified as the self-conferred intellectual lords or according to their standard. I have no fancy education or PhDs. My parents made immense financial sacrifices to send me to school. After I wrote CXC, I had to work and studied part- time.
I couldn’t afford a full-time university education. I did an Advanced Diploma in Banking and Finance. It was nearly 10 years into my career at a financial institution when I held a senior position, I enrolled into a master’s programme and was eligible to enter the programme through the mature-student route.

I financed my postgrad studies from my earnings, aided by an interest-free loan from my employer, which was a financial institution. Fortunately, it is not a 2×2 masters, the university is ranked in the top five per cent global university rankings, and most importantly, credible and accredited. I graduated in absentia because I couldn’t afford to attend the actual graduation in Scotland.

Coming back to the AFC’s press release referenced above, 99 per cent of the press statement was surrounded by an excessive embellishment of Dr Adams’s qualifications and experience drawing from his 30 year-career at the US Department of Energy (UDOE). The way he was sold to the Guyanese public, one would think he held the highest portfolio at the USDoE.

While I have no intentions of trivialising his career accomplishments in the US, whatever those were that he claimed; I must point out that the position he held when he retired was below that of a mid-level management position.
According to the organisational chart on the UDoE’s website, he was situated seven levels below the Office of the Secretary (the Office of the Secretary is the Head of the Organization). He retired as a Deputy Manager in the Office of Environmental Management. (See organisational chart attached hereto, which was taken directly from the US Department of Energy’s website).

On the contrary, in Guyana, when he was appointed Executive Director of the EPA, as the Head of that organisation, he violated the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act. To this end, there was no audit done of the EPA’s financial statements for the years during his tenure and in fact, for the entire tenure under the APNU+AFC between 2016 and 2020.

Those audits had to be done under the PPP/C government. In other words, the PPP/C had to clean up the “mess,” thanks to the supremely qualified, Vincent Adams. As of 2024, the last audit report noted that all the outstanding years’ audits were completed and laid over to the National Assembly.
Not only that, BUT the AFC ALSO claimed that Adams secured an unlimited guarantee from Exxon to cover the environmental liability. Yet, he has failed to prove to the nation when and in what form he secured that guarantee. There must be some written documentation or letter to that effect. How come he has never produced it?

Ironically, the AFC contends that the government is in court fighting against the unlimited guarantee, but has failed to acknowledge that Nigel Hughes, the AFC leader, is Exxon’s attorney in the very case fighting against the unlimited guarantee at the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).
What the AFC would not tell you is that the government is not siding with Exxon against the unlimited guarantee, the unlimited guarantee is not provided for in our laws and, therefore, not legally required. What is required is adequate coverage, which was secured.
And if the High Court’s ruling is to be enforced, it means that Exxon would have to cease operations immediately, which would have severe adverse economic repercussions for the country. This is the only reason why the government joined the case, to protect the country’s interest in order to avert any negative effects.

All in all, while the AFC’s self-acclaimed intellectual lords boast of superior qualifications, their combined proven track records are atrociously inferior. Nigel Hughes himself revealed at his last press conference that he has presided over some 1,200 cases since 1992. He should now say how many victories he had.
Yours faithfully,
Joel Bhagwandin