President Mohamed Irfaan Ali of Guyana at the 2024 Concordia Summit in New York. Image: Riccardo Savi/Getty Images via The Guardian.
(The Post News) – Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali is projected to win this year’s election after capturing over 240,000 votes and seven of the country’s ten electoral districts, according to preliminary results. However, the election result is tempered by debates over the allocation of Guyana’s newfound oil riches.
Guyana’s Oil Crisis
Since Guyana’s major offshore oil discovery in 2015, the nation of roughly 800,000 people has transformed into one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. Ali, who has served as president since 2020, has presided over much of this transition and is credited with steering the country’s early oil boom.
Since late 2019, Guyana has earned an estimated US $7.5 billion in revenue from oil sales and royalties, which enabled the government to quadruple the state budget. This allowed for more social subsidies and public service infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals, to be built and quintupled the GDP to almost US$26bn. Ali told the Guardian, “We have delivered everything we set out to do over the last five years, and that is why they trust us with our vision and agenda for the next five years.”
Opposition Amanzia Walton-Desir argued that while the country has made unprecedented wealth, many Guyanese people are still poor due to inflation. The country struggles with some of the highest poverty levels in the region. Across the border, long a political rival, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro accused Ali of being “a puppet of ExxonMobil,” the company that dominates Guyana’s oil sector. Ali has not publicly responded to Maduro’s remarks, instead assuring voters that his party can be trusted to safeguard Guyana’s future. The final results of the election will be revealed on Monday.
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