Beating Populism: How To Fight Back
16 April 2026
148. The President of Guyana: The Fastest Growing Economy in the World (Irfaan Ali)
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Podcast
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15 August 2025
How does Guyana balance its unprecedented economic growth, largely due to oil discoveries, with environmental sustainability? How does Guyana perceive and address the historical scar left by slavery? What has happened to West Indies cricket, and how does the future look?
Alastair is joined by President of Guyana, Ifraan Ali, to answer all these questions and more.
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Social Producer: Harry Balden
Video Editor: Josh Smith
Assistant Producer: Alice Horrell
Producer: Nicole Maslen
Head of Content: Tom Whiter
Exec Producers: Tony Pastor, Jack Davenport
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Alastair Campbell, co-host of the political podcast The Rest is Politics, asked in the new episode of Leading—featuring Irfaan Ali, the President of Guyana—some important questions regarding the country’s low-carbon strategy, management of the sovereign wealth fund (including the Norway model), corruption in the wake of the oil boom, and Guyana’s position on the Venezuelan border controversy.
He was, however, largely served fairy tales about good governance and effective corruption management in Guyana—how the NRF is under strict parliamentary control, and so forth. Overall, it was a missed opportunity to probe Guyana’s President with the questions that matter:
• Why haven’t you renegotiated the lopsided oil contract with ExxonMobil and its partners?
• Why has the ruling party blocked all parliamentary commissions of oversight from functioning?
• How come infrastructure projects are awarded to incompetent contractors with no track record?
• Why haven’t you travelled to Norway to learn how they have insulated their sovereign wealth fund from political interference?
• Why has the President not set up a Commission of Inquiry to investigate credible evidence of alleged corruption involving Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo?
• Why hasn’t the President investigated the Commissioner of Information for blocking requests for public information?
• How come Silica City—the President’s pet development project—is being planned and built without parliamentary control, oversight, or an approved budget?
• How will the Government of Guyana respond to last year’s recommendations of the UN Human Rights Committee on civil and political rights?
• What is your administration’s strategy to make Guyana attractive enough for university graduates to stay in a country where nepotism and party loyalty often trump merit?
• How come the broad Guyanese public has only seen increases in the cost of living and housing shortages, while a few chosen ones—mainly associated with the ruling party and their families and friends—have profited massively from the oil boom?
These are only some of the burning questions that should have been asked in such a forum. President Ali systematically refuses to give interviews to the domestic independent press and does not respond to questions from NGOs such as the Oil & Gas Governance Network (OGGN) Guyana (www.oggn.org) or members of civil society.
OGGN conducted an eight-week letter campaign, asking various members of the Government of Guyana specific questions regarding the lopsided 2016 oil contract. None of the ministers, including the President himself, took the time to address the questions raised (see the OGGN homepage for links to the February–April 2025 letter campaign). Is this the President’s vision of inclusive and responsible government? Or is it a reflection of the reality of good governance, accountability, and transparency in Guyana under his rule?
In closing: what is the true value of interviews with leaders of the Global South if the moderator has little knowledge of the country and no real grasp of its domestic politics—apart from a briefing with the British High Commissioner to Guyana prior to recording the conversation? If you are unable to separate fairy tales from facts, you are doing both your audience and your brand a disservice.