Guyana Holds Critical Vote As Oil Boom Looms

Of Victors and Spoils: Guyana Holds Crucial Vote As Oil Boom Looms Guyana Last week, Guyanese police and soldiers were escorting election officials and ballot boxes on the Essequibo River along the Venezuelan border to a remote area for Monday’s general elections, when they came under fire from their neighbor. No one was injured, and the ballot boxes made it safely to three polling stations in the disputed Essequibo Region. “The patrol immediately returned fire and successfully maneuvered the escort team out of danger,” police said. The incident, however, highlighted the stakes of the election that was held on Sept. 1, when thousands of voters in Guyana went to the polls to choose their leader, lawmakers, and local representatives in what many say was the South American country’s most consequential election in decades. “The electoral choices are stark,” Christopher Ram, a Guyanese analyst and columnist, told the Financial Times. “Historians will describe this as the mother of all elections in Guyana.” At stake is control over $10 billion in annual revenue from offshore oil and gas production, a new bonanza for a small, poor country of around 800,000 people that was, until recently, dependent on gold, sugar, rice, bauxite, and timber. Now, it produces nearly 900,000 barrels of oil a day, and that amount is growing. As a result, it is slated to surpass Iran’s production in two years and has the highest projected growth in oil production in the world through 2035. But the country’s resources are also putting it in the crosshairs of Venezuela and in the middle of the global competition between the United States and China, both of which eye the country’s resources and have invested in the country. Venezuela claims the oil-rich Essequibo Region, which has prompted fears of a military clash breaking out over it. Earlier this year, it held an illegal election for the governor of Essequibo and has made threatening incursions into Guyana’s territory. The dispute over Essequibo, which makes up about two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and has been administered by Guyana for more than a century, intensified in 2015 after the discovery of oil deposits by US-based energy giant ExxonMobil. Guyana, a former British and Dutch colony, says that Essequibo’s borders were decided by an arbitration panel in 1899. However, Venezuela counters that the Essequibo River to the region’s east has historically formed a natural border recognized in 1777. The dispute is currently before the International Court of Justice in The Hague. In the meantime, the US has deployed more than 4,000 troops to the region, as well as at least three destroyer warships and a guided-missile cruiser, ostensibly to fight the Cartel of the Suns: This is allegedly a criminal drug trafficking network that the US government says is led by members of Venezuela’s armed forces. The US presence in the region is likely to deter the Venezuelan threat, analysts said. The geopolitics playing out over the small, yet highly diverse country with the world’s fastest growing economy – the World Bank estimates its gross domestic product growth at around 15 percent annually – has overshadowed its vote. Earlier this week, the Associated Press reported that preliminary results showed that the governing Indo-dominated People’s Progressive Party (PPP) of President Irfaan Ali won handily over the Afro-supported main opposition party, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU). The upstart newcomer mixed-race party, We Invest In Nationhood, led by US-sanctioned Guyanese businessman Azruddin Mohamed, who comes from one of the country’s wealthiest families, came in second. Ali’s party also trumped the APNU in the 2020 elections. The elections had mostly been about the spoils of the country’s newfound wealth, how they would be spent, and the inflation they are causing. Some voters said they wanted a change from the two traditional parties, the PPP and the APNU, which have governed Guyana since even before its independence from the UK in 1966. Others said the government has not distributed the wealth sufficiently – despite its public works projects and initiatives to lift citizens out of poverty in what was, until recently, one of South America’s poorest countries. “What they give us is not enough,” Evelyn Crawford, a 75-year-old retiree who voted for the opposition, told the Associated Press, referring to her pension of $200 a month. “I would like to see that people are lifted out of poverty.” Some say they see evidence of the change the government has made already. “(The government has been) helping the people and giving us what we need,” Omadai Persaud, a bus driver, told the Guardian. “We have free education, free university … hospitals and all resources.”