In my analy­sis last Sun­day of Guyana’s Sep­tem­ber 1 gen­er­al and re­gion­al elec­tions, I’d said that new­ly re-elect­ed Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali needs to gov­ern in­clu­sive­ly. In his in­au­gu­ra­tion speech, it was an im­per­a­tive that he him­self recog­nised.

The vis­i­ble sign of Guyana’s suc­cess is the boom that is tak­ing place, par­tic­u­lar­ly around greater George­town. Guyana’s an­nu­al re­al GDP growth is 10.3 per cent, the high­est in the world. For­eign in­vest­ment is surg­ing. New re­serves of oil have been dis­cov­ered off­shore.

Guyana has been an eco­nom­ic bul­let train these past few years, and Ali has most­ly met the mo­ment. He seemed to grow in the job, mov­ing with con­fi­dence on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage. He brought the sub­stance in a feisty, vi­ral BBC HARDTalk seg­ment in April 2024, but he’s one of the best in the game at the sym­bol­ism–from clap­ping roti at a Guyanese kitchen in New York to cook­ing cur­ry for fel­low Cari­com lead­ers he host­ed.

I had a cou­ple of con­ver­sa­tions with the Guyanese leader ear­li­er in his first term, and I sensed rather than heard this from him–that he’s seek­ing noth­ing less than a re­align­ment of Guyanese pol­i­tics. To smash the racial moulds, or if you want to be less char­i­ta­ble, to per­ma­nent­ly neu­tralise long­stand­ing ri­vals AP­NU as a po­lit­i­cal force.

He’ll con­tin­ue to peel sup­port­ers from them. Two cat­alyt­ic ini­tia­tives he seems to care deeply about are sports fa­cil­i­ties con­struc­tion and land deeds and ti­tles al­lo­ca­tion. How­ev­er, he has to ad­dress the per­cep­tion from some cit­i­zens that trick­le-down and wealth shar­ing have not oc­curred. That may be the key to a re­lent­less­ly am­bi­tious pres­i­dent grow­ing his base in the way that he wants to.

The con­struc­tion boom masks prob­lems. Ex­e­cu­tion and plan­ning of­ten don’t go to­geth­er. Some of the build­ings in the fast-ex­pand­ing zone south of George­town, East Bank De­mer­ara, can run ahead of util­i­ties such as wa­ter and roads.

Zon­ing in the cap­i­tal is ter­ri­ble. A well-en­dowed in­vestor can seem­ing­ly erect a tow­er­ing eye­sore in a his­tor­i­cal area. With no­table ex­cep­tions such as George­town’s City Hall and St George’s Cathe­dral, too many his­toric build­ings are un­der threat of de­cay or de­mo­li­tion.

Guyana is bad­ly in need of her­itage ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing build­ing list­ing and preser­va­tion. She can’t save them all, but she must do more to save more. The Gov­ern­ment can give the im­pres­sion of be­ing in thrall to new mon­ey. They need to demon­strate greater sen­si­tiv­i­ty to her­itage and his­to­ry.

What do they want Guyana to look like in 2035? Ali seems sin­cere and pur­pose­ful about trans­for­ma­tion. New roads. Great. In­ter­na­tion­al-class ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions. A paved high­way up­grad­ing the road to Brazil would be a fan­tas­tic ac­com­plish­ment. We mar­vel at the stun­ning new bridge across the De­mer­ara. We’ve been told of plans for a bridge across the main riv­er in the east, the Berbice, and a bridge to Suri­name over the Coren­tyne Riv­er.

What I’d al­so like to hear is a com­pre­hen­sive, de­tailed, joined-up de­vel­op­ment vi­sion com­mu­ni­cat­ed to Guyanese cit­i­zens at home or abroad. A long-term vi­sion, not piece­meal up­dates. For a coun­try of Guyana’s size, rail­way should be a se­ri­ous trans­port op­tion. Is it? Gov­ern­ment com­mu­ni­ca­tions, nev­er a strong point, need to step up big time here.

Food and agri­cul­ture is a sec­tor for which the pres­i­dent har­bours the most am­bi­tion, but it’s al­so the area of his most con­spic­u­ous first-term fail­ure. Guyana aims to feed the Caribbean but can’t of­fer af­ford­able every­day food items in her mar­kets. A large for­eign work­force has caused sharp food price in­fla­tion.

There’s progress.

Agro-pro­cess­ing in­vest­ments are in, and more land is un­der cul­ti­va­tion, but the re­al­i­sa­tion of the pres­i­dent’s grand plan should start with his cit­i­zens be­ing able to af­ford the price of toma­to and bo­di. The Op­po­si­tion failed to ex­ploit this as a cam­paign is­sue when it was a clear area of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty.

Cari­com’s 25 by 25 ini­tia­tive, aimed at re­duc­ing the re­gion’s $6B food bill by 25 per cent by 2025, has been pushed back to 2030.

The main rea­son seemed to be un­cer­tain­ty caused by Trump’s hap­haz­ard im­po­si­tion of tar­iffs, but it is not a good look for the Guyanese pres­i­dent, the re­gion­al lead on this– Cari­com and its part­ner, the Caribbean Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion. And we need re­lief soon­er.