Georgetown (Guyana) (AFP) – Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali claimed reelection Wednesday to a second term, tasked with turning the South American nation’s newfound oil riches into prosperity while navigating tensions with neighbor Venezuela.
“The numbers are clear… We have a great majority and we are ready to take the country forward,” the 45-year-old told AFP by telephone.
Official final results of Monday’s vote have not yet been published.
Ali faces the uphill challenge of reconstructing a country with the highest proven crude oil reserves per capita in the world but one of the highest poverty levels in Latin America.
According to a 2024 report by the Inter-American Development Bank, 58 percent of Guyanese lived in poverty despite an oil boom that has quadrupled the state budget to $6.7 billion since production began in 2019.
Guyana, with its breakneck pace of economic growth at 43.6 percent in 2024 – the highest in Latin America – aims to boost oil output from 650,000 barrels per day to over a million by 2030.
Ali had promised on the campaign trail to “put more money in your pocket.”
“Guyana will soon be a rich country, and the question is whether it will be a rich country full of poor people or whether… the wealth meets the needs of the people,” Jason Carter of the US-based Carter Center NGO, which observed Monday’s vote, told reporters in Georgetown Wednesday.
“The world is watching,” he added.