HGP Nightly News – Former EPA Head Dr. Vincent Adams says President Irfaan Ali was correct in saying that the conflict involving Iran and the United States is not a distant issue for Guyana, but argues that the President’s assessment fell short because it did not tell citizens how the Government intends to respond.
Speaking exclusively to Nightly News, Adams said there was little dispute about the President’s central point that the conflict has wider global consequences. In his view, however, that reality is already widely understood by the public. “Sure it is,” Adams said, referring to the President’s assessment. “Everybody knows that. People can read, and they look at the news, and they have common sense.” For Adams, the real concern was not whether the President correctly described the crisis, but whether he provided any meaningful policy direction in response.
Adams was sharply critical of what he described as a speech focused more on explaining the obvious than on outlining solutions. “That’s the basic problem,” he said. “That’s not leadership.” In his view, a leader’s role is not simply to catalogue the consequences of a crisis, but to tell citizens what the Government will actually do to reduce the impact on their lives. He argued that many Guyanese are already feeling the effects through rising transport costs, higher food prices and growing concern about fuel and fertiliser supplies.
According to Adams, what is missing is a clear short-term and long-term plan. “The most important thing about leadership is not only coming up with a diatribe of problems. What is the solution?” he said. He added that, based on everything that had been publicly reported so far, “there was not one instance of solution or a policy as to how to resolve this crisis.” While he acknowledged that Guyana may not have every tool immediately available to fully shield itself, he said the Government still has a duty to explain how it intends to respond and what steps it will take to ease the burden on citizens.
Adams said the President himself referenced key pressure points such as transport, food and fertiliser, but failed to go further and explain what measures would follow. “We don’t need to hear what the problem is. We’re reading about the problem. The people are reading about the problem. They’re feeling it for us,” he said. “How are you going to resolve the problem? Not a single word came from him.” For Adams, that omission is at the heart of the public frustration now being seen.
He also argued that the absence of a clear response plan has contributed to public anxiety and panic. In his view, citizens are moving to protect themselves because they do not trust that the Government is prepared to act decisively. “The reason why you had the panic, as a matter of fact, it’s because the people recognize, the people do not trust this government,” Adams said. He contended that when people do not hear practical solutions from the authorities, they begin making their own decisions out of fear and self-preservation.
Adams further criticised what he described as overly elaborate language that, in his view, did little to reassure the public. He said people do not need a lecture on global geopolitics or shipping chokepoints if what they really want to know is how the crisis will affect them at home and what the Government will do about it. “Speak to people in plain, simple language as to how you will address the problem. It’s as simple as that,” he said.
In the end, Adams maintained that the President was not wrong in identifying the conflict as a global crisis with implications for Guyana. What he challenged was the lack of a practical response tied to that assessment. “He’s absolutely correct,” Adams said, but added that “the people of Guyana are still waiting as to what will be the short-term and long-term plans and policies.” His position is that until those plans are clearly laid out, the Government’s message will remain incomplete in the eyes of many citizens.
