 "Irfaan Ali, Guyana’s newly re-elected president, and his connection to India explained")
Mohamed Irfaan Ali has been re-elected as the president of Guyana.
Ali, 45, the chief of the ruling People’s Progressive Party (PPP), first came to power in 2020. His PPP won more than double the votes of its nearest competitor and appears to have increased its vote share since then.
Ali’s main rivals in Monday’s vote were Aubrey Norton of the leftist opposition People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) and multi-millionaire populist Azruddin Mohamed, who founded his own We Invest in the Nation (WIN) party just a few months ago. Meanwhile, the long-time opposition heavyweight party, Partnership for National Unity (APNU), was lagging far behind.
“We ask you to trust us once more to deliver greater, better, faster and more efficiently,” Ali told supporters over the weekend. “We have the experience, and you can trust us to lead you into the bright, prosperous future ahead of us.”
On the campaign trail, Ali promised voters he would “put more money in your pocket.”
But who is Ali? And what do we know about his connection to India?
Who is Ali?
Ali is an urban planner and economist. He was born on April 25, 1980, into a Muslim Indo-Guyanese family in Leonora, on the West Coast of Demerara.
He was educated first at Leonora Nursery and Primary schools, then at Cornelia Ida Primary School. Ali completed his secondary education at St Stanislaus College in Georgetown.
He holds several degrees, including a Doctorate in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of the West Indies. He also has a Master of Arts in Manpower Planning, a Postgraduate Diploma in International Business, a Postgraduate Certificate in Finance from Anglia Ruskin University, an LLM in International Commercial Law from the University of Salford, and a Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) in Business Management from the University of Sunderland.
Ali was a member of the Canadian Institute of Management (until 2017) and a certified Project Management Professional (PMP, since 2006).
He has held a number of posts in the Guyanese government, including Project Manager of the Caribbean Development Bank’ s Project Implementation Unit in the Ministry of Finance, and senior planner in the State Planning Secretariat. In 2006, Ali became a member of the National Assembly of Guyana. He was later assigned the portfolios of Minister of Housing and Water, and Minister of Tourism, Industry and Commerce. He also chaired the Public Accounts Committee and co-chaired the Economic Services Committee of the Parliament of Guyana.
Ali is married and a father.
What’s the Indian connection?
Ali’s family came to Guyana from India in the 19th century as indentured labourers. In 2023, he was awarded the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman—the highest honour for overseas Indians.
Ali first came to power in 2020 after a controversial five-month standoff over vote counting. Since then, he has overseen one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.
Ali now faces the uphill challenge of reconstructing a country that has the highest proven crude oil reserves per capita in the world, yet also one of the highest poverty levels in Latin America.
According to a 2024 report by the Inter-American Development Bank, 58 per cent of Guyanese live in poverty, despite an oil boom that has quadrupled the state budget to $6.7 billion since production began in 2019. This followed the discovery of vast crude reserves off Guyana’s coast in 2015 by oil giant ExxonMobil.
Much of these reserves are in the Essequibo region, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory but is also claimed by neighbouring Venezuela. The territorial dispute has intensified, though the region has been administered by Guyana for over 100 years.
On election day, Venezuela escalated tensions by accusing Guyana of “trying to create a war front” after Georgetown claimed Venezuelan troops had fired at a boat transporting election materials in Essequibo.
Guyana, with its breakneck economic growth of 43.6 per cent in 2024—the highest in Latin America—aims to boost oil output from 650,000 barrels per day to more than a million by 2030. The International Monetary Fund has pegged Guyana’s GDP at nearly $26 billion—up from $5 billion in 2020, when Ali first took office.
“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 on Wednesday. “The world is watching,” he added.
Observers from the Carter Center and the EU reported Wednesday that the vote took place without major incident but highlighted an “uneven playing field” created by the use of public resources to exert “undue influence” on voters in favour of the ruling party.
“The president and his administration inaugurated a high number of public projects (hospitals, schools, roads and bridges) and launched several social support programmes, combining these events with campaign activities,” the EU mission’s preliminary report noted.
With inputs from agencies
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