Author: Christopher Ram

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The Road to First Oil: Every Man, Woman and Child Must become Oil-minded

Column 194 – The Resource Curse Begins on a Farm (Part 2)

In Column 193, I argued that the controversy surrounding President Irfaan Ali’s farm at Long Creek is not fundamentally about agriculture. It is about governance in an oil-producing state. It raises questions that no presidential video, however polished, can answer. Those questions belong to independent institutions.

But Long Creek did not arise in isolation. It is the latest manifestation of a style of governance that has become increasingly evident during President Ali’s administration. The issue is not simply the acquisition or operation of a farm. It is whether Guyana’s institutions of accountability have kept pace with the extraordinary concentration of political and economic power that has accompanied the country’s petroleum transformation.

Every presidency leaves an institutional legacy. Some strengthen Parliament, reinforce the rule of law and enlarge the space for independent oversight. Others centralise authority, weaken scrutiny and leave institutions less capable of performing their constitutional functions. It is against that standard that every presidency should be judged, including this one.

The record is troubling.

Parliament, the central institution of representative democracy, has become progressively less effective as an instrument of accountability. The Public Accounts Committee, historically one of Parliament’s most important oversight mechanisms, has ceased to play the role contemplated by the Constitution and the Standing Orders. Public accounts have remained outstanding for years, depriving Parliament and the public of timely scrutiny of the expenditure of billions of dollars of public money. Parliamentary sittings themselves have become infrequent, often convened principally to facilitate the Government’s legislative and financial agenda rather than to provide sustained scrutiny of executive action.

Equally significant has been the weakening, or failure to strengthen, institutions specifically intended to hold the Executive to account. The previous administration established the State Assets Recovery Agency as part of a wider accountability framework. The Ali administration repealed that legislation and abolished the Agency. Whether SARA was effective is open to debate. Eliminating an accountability institution rather than reforming it sent an unmistakable signal about the direction of governance.

The promised Petroleum Commission has likewise failed to materialise. That omission is difficult to reconcile with the scale of Guyana’s petroleum sector. Every major oil-producing nation recognises that technical regulation should not rest exclusively within central government. Guyana, despite repeated commitments, continues without the independent regulator that has long been promised.

The same concerns arise in relation to access to information. A democracy cannot function effectively if the disclosure of information depends upon executive goodwill rather than enforceable legal rights. Yet the Office of the Commissioner of Information has never assumed the prominence or effectiveness that Parliament intended. Transparency remains more an aspiration than an institutional reality.

Perhaps no institution better illustrates the failure to modernise accountability than the Integrity Commission. Guyana is no longer the country it was when that legislation was enacted. The economy has been transformed by petroleum wealth, sophisticated corporate structures and unprecedented opportunities for the accumulation of assets. Yet the disclosure regime remains substantially frozen in time.

The declaration form itself is wholly inadequate for a modern petroleum economy. It is neither a comprehensive disclosure instrument nor a true statutory declaration attracting the ordinary legal consequences of sworn statements. It occupies an uncertain space between the two. More remarkable still, despite almost three decades of profound economic change, successive governments have failed to modernise it. If Guyana is serious about integrity in public life, the law requires more than cosmetic adjustment. It requires fundamental reform.

These institutional weaknesses matter because they coincide with the expansion of executive discretion in matters involving immense public resources.

Silica City is a striking example. Presented as one of the country’s flagship development initiatives, it has attracted commitments involving billions of dollars. Yet the public has received little comprehensive accounting of expenditure, procurement, implementation or measurable outcomes. Public confidence cannot be sustained where projects of such magnitude proceed without regular and detailed public reporting.

Long Creek therefore assumes a significance that extends well beyond the President’s private affairs. The question is not whether President Ali is entitled to own a farm or engage in agriculture. He is. The question is whether the Head of State, exercising enormous constitutional authority while simultaneously pursuing substantial private commercial interests, should be subject to disclosure standards more exacting than those applicable to ordinary citizens. The answer must surely be yes.

That is particularly so because the Presidency does not end when a President leaves office. The law provides substantial continuing benefits, recognising the enduring dignity and importance of the office. Those public privileges reinforce the need for rigorous conflict-of-interest rules and comprehensive disclosure obligations. Private commercial interests must never be allowed to collide with public office and authority, without transparent safeguards protecting both the office-holder and the public.

The issues raised in these two columns concern the architecture of constitutional government in a country rapidly developing by oil wealth. While the general rule is that every administration builds projects, only some leave behind stronger democratic institutions than they inherited. Future Presidents will inherit the institutions being shaped today. If those institutions are independent, resilient and capable of scrutinising executive power without fear or favour, President Ali will have made a lasting contribution to Guyana’s democracy. If, however, they emerge weaker, more dependent or less capable of holding the Executive to account, that too will become part of his legacy.

History’s verdict on President Ali will rest not only on the prosperity generated during Guyana’s first oil boom, but on whether he strengthened the institutions that protect the Republic or weakened them when they were most needed. If the verdict is the latter, Long Creek will be remembered not as a controversy over a farm but as the moment when Guyana’s Resource Curse ceased to be a theory and became both a constitutional and an institutional reality.

Finally, obvious as it is, it is still worth noting that a President governs not only by constitutional authority but by personal example. If legitimate questions about his own conduct remain unresolved through independent institutional scrutiny, his moral authority to demand the highest standards from Ministers, public officials and the wider public is inevitably weakened.

That is not only sad. It will be self-inflicted.

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Final response to Peeping Tom

Dear Editor,

For a columnist who does not usually respond, Peeping Tom has spent the past several days doing little else. In each of his offerings he has attempted to address the points I raised concerning President Ali’s farm. Tom either considers the matter serious, or he is troubled by the implications of what I wrote. Either way, we are agreed that it is no small thing.

I am told that my analogy is false; that a farm is not a crime scene; that on my reasoning every owner of a refrigerator must account for himself. I have to admit, I did not see the one about the refrigerator coming. But since he has a problem with Phala, I offer an example with some notable parallels – Nkandla. That involved the homestead of South African President Jacob Zuma. There were no missing dollars; no currency in the furniture; no stolen money; no criminal proceeds; no suspicious transaction – all elements which Peeping Tom tells us are the indispensable threshold. What it had, on 13th  December, 2011, was a complaint from a member of the public, asking the Public Protector, under an Act by that name, to establish whether a newspaper report was true. A citizen wanted to know if what was published in the press was accurate. Two years earlier, the Presidency had met a similar report with a denial that State finances were used. There was unsubstantiated explanation. There were no documents. The reader may find the arrangement familiar.

The Public Protector investigated anyway. She was not obliged to prove anything first; she was obliged to find out. What she found – that the President had knowingly derived undue benefit from a swimming pool, an amphitheatre, a cattle kraal and a chicken run built at the State’s expense, on works whose cost had escalated to over R215 million – was the product of the inquiry, not its precondition. Zuma did not accept it. It took the Constitutional Court to hold, unanimously, that her remedial action bound him. He repaid R7.81 million.

Now apply Peeping Tom’s test. In December 2011 there was no credible evidence at Nkandla – only a newspaper article and a citizen’s question. On his reasoning the Public Protector had no business lifting a finger, and nothing would ever have been repaid. Yet that same inquiry cleared Zuma on one count, accepting that he had spoken to Parliament in good faith and finding no breach of the ethics code on that count. That is what inquiries do – they exonerate as readily as they indict. It is the President’s friends, not his critics, who should want one, for an inquiry is the only thing that can convert an assurance into a finding. Instead, we are offered the assurance and denied the inquiry.

Nor is this my invention. In The Public Protector v Mail & Guardian Ltd 2011 (4) SA 420 (SCA), the Supreme Court of Appeal upheld the setting aside of a Public Protector’s report – not because he had investigated without evidence, but because he had not investigated at all. The argument made on his behalf will be familiar: that the journalist had produced no evidence contradicting the Director-General, had not shown why his word should be doubted, and that a man of high office could not be questioned merely because a journalist disbelieved him.

Nugent JA gave it short shrift. Truth and deceit, he said, know no status or occupation. The hallmark of that failed investigation was that responses were sought from people in high office and “recited without question as if they were fact”, and an investigator in that state of mind is no more than a spokesman. There is no justification, the Court added, for telling the public it must accept that nothing improper occurred merely because nobody has proved the contrary. The investigator is not there to decide whether an onus has been discharged. He is there to be sure.

The same Court said something else that Tom should read. The politicians who asked for that investigation had no independent knowledge of anything. They had read the newspaper. That was enough, for as the Court held, a request for an inquiry must not be scrutinised as if it were a pleading.

Tom is right that a farm is not the offence, and that the circumstances surrounding the object are what matter. That is my point exactly. The circumstances here are that twenty acres of State land were leased to a man who is now Head of State, by a man who is now his Vice President; that the acreage is disputed between the President and the Leader of the Opposition; that the financing, the approvals and the tax treatment rest on assertion alone; and that beyond the lease unearthed by this newspaper, the President has produced not a single document. Tom mistakes the asking for the alleging. He has done so in every column, and I begin to suspect it is not a mistake. Nor is he finished: several of my points remain untouched, and at his present rate we may look for them by the weekend. I only hope he is not crowding out the other Toms. I am told there is more than one.

And let me save him some trouble. If a letter should shortly appear over a name we have not met, making these same points in this same order – that questions are not evidence, that he who asserts must prove, that an inquiry is a fishing expedition – the reader will have read it already, and will know what he is reading. I say no more than that.

Tom tells us that institutions worthy of the name should pursue facts. On that we agree entirely. My suggestion is for the process to begin.

Christopher Ram

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If Peeping Tom has the answers, he should share them.

Dear Editor,

In its column of Saturday July 11, Peeping Tom proceeds on a simplistic proposition. He argues that my call for a Commission of Inquiry into President Ali’s agricultural enterprise amounts to a “fishing expedition” because I have raised questions rather than produced evidence of wrongdoing. That is an attractive slogan. It is also a false premise.

He treats me as though I have accused the President of criminal conduct. I do no such thing. My position has been consistent. Where legitimate questions arise concerning the conduct of the holder of the highest constitutional office in the Republic, particularly where those questions relate to a substantial private enterprise operating in a sector directly affected by Government policy, those questions deserve independent verification. That is not an allegation of guilt. It is a constitutional principle.

In invoking concepts such as burden of proof and prima facie evidence, Peeping Tom conjures up a courtroom in a criminal trial. He is too clever not to recognise that the issue is accountability, not criminality. In doing so, he treats the President as though he were merely an ordinary businessman defending a private investment. Ali is no ordinary businessman. He is Head of State, Head of Government and Chairman of Cabinet. The Government over which he presides allocates State lands, formulates agricultural policy, grants tax concessions, administers environmental laws and exercises enormous executive authority. The standard of transparency expected of such an office-holder must necessarily be higher than that expected of private citizens.

Curiously, after devoting an entire column to my letter, Tom never addresses the questions themselves. He does not tell us how or when the additional lands were acquired, or the sources of his massive borrowings. Or whether all the necessary environmental approvals were obtained before development commenced. Or whether the President declared his personal interest before permanent tax concessions benefiting agriculture were introduced. Nor does he tell us of the financial implications of those concessions for the enterprise, the terms on which it was financed, or whether every statutory obligation has been fully discharged. Or whether his farm income, not being part of his “official emoluments”, is declared on his annual tax return, and taxes paid.

If Tom knows the answers, he should publish them. If he does not, he should still say whether he accepts that the Guyanese public has a right to the know.

Instead, he advances the remarkable proposition that because these questions remain unanswered, they should not be independently examined. That turns accountability on its head. He also suggests that because the President first acquired twenty acres some fifteen years ago, much of the controversy evaporates. It does not. The issue has never been the original twenty acres. It is the development of what is now a substantial agricultural enterprise by a sitting President exercising the highest executive authority in the State. The chronology answers none of the questions concerning the acquisition of the additional lands, the financing of the enterprise, the regulatory approvals, the tax concessions or the management of possible conflicts of interest.

Finally, Peeping Tom devotes considerable attention to explaining why a Commission of Inquiry may not be the appropriate mechanism. Reasonable people may differ on that question. If another genuinely independent process exists that can command public confidence and answer these questions transparently, I would welcome it.

My concern has never been the label attached to the investigation. It has always been the independence of the investigation. The President’s explanation deserves to be heard. It does not deserve to become the investigation, the evidence, the findings and the verdict.

In the new Guyana, where public office now carries unprecedented economic significance, the people of Guyana are entitled to nothing less.

 Christopher Ram

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Road to First Oil: Every Man, Woman and Child Must Become Oil-minded. Column No. 193  July 12, 2026

The Resource Curse has arrived – on a Farm Part I

The story of the month, and perhaps of the year, has been President Irfaan Ali’s farm at Long Creek, an area off the Soesdyke-Linden Highway. Readers may well ask what a farm has to do with oil and gas and the Resource Curse. The answer is simple: everything. Not because the farm produces oil, but because every oil-producing country eventually confronts the same question: are its institutions stronger than its politicians? Guyana is confronted with that question much sooner than expected. Ironically, the first real test has come not from the Stabroek Block, the Natural Resource Fund or ExxonMobil. It has come from a farm.

Let me say too what this column is not about. It is not about whether President Irfaan Ali is entitled to own a farm. He is. Nor is it about whether agriculture deserves encouragement. It does. Any sensible person would welcome greater investment in food production and agro-processing if Guyana is to avoid becoming hopelessly dependent on oil. But President Ali needs to appreciate that he is no ordinary investor, let alone farmer.  

Following his return from St. Lucia, President Ali issued a lengthy video presentation in which he denied wrongdoing, spoke of bank loans, insisted that he had received no special treatment and sought to discredit the source of the allegations, Azruddin Mohamed, Leader of the Opposition. He was entitled to answer Mohamed, a former political ally and financier turned political nemesis. Indeed, public office imposed a duty on him to do so. But he and his defenders appear to believe that a 12-minute video constituted a verdict of innocence. It did not.

Even a President’s fact-based explanation is not an investigation. Nor can it be. The President cannot be investigator, witness, advocate and judge in the same cause. Public confidence is strengthened not when questions are answered by the person whose conduct is in issue, but when those answers are independently tested and verified.

The President says that the farm was financed by bank loans. Fine. Then let the documents speak. Was he using the term “bank” loosely to include the PPP-leaning New Building Society? When were the loans approved? To whom were they granted? Were they made to the President personally or to a company? What security was offered? When was each parcel of land acquired? Was it purchased, leased or allocated? Where is the evidence that public resources were not employed, or that the authority of the Presidency was not invoked to facilitate, if not finance, the project? These are not hostile questions. These questions are not being asked by an investigator, auditor or banker but by ordinary citizens and they have a right to answers.

If the President is right, independent scrutiny will vindicate him. If he is wrong, the country has as much a right to know as he has a duty to disclose. The video proved neither innocence nor misconduct. But for the holder of the highest office in the land, sworn to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law, it fell well short of the standard any constitutional democracy is entitled to expect. In a democracy, Presidents do not certify their own conduct. Independent institutions do.

That brings us to the issue of oil and gas governance.

Oil has changed everything. What once passed as ordinary political controversy has become a test of institutional strength and public accountability. The 2026 Budget granted generous tax concessions to agriculture and agro-processing. Once the Head of State owns a substantial agricultural enterprise, the issue ceases to be merely economic. It becomes one of governance. How are conflicts of interest identified, disclosed and managed? How does the public know that national policy was not a cloak for private benefit?

International examples show that the Resource Curse does not begin with missing billions, corrupt petroleum contracts or white-elephant projects. Those are its later symptoms. It begins when institutions yield to power, transparency gives way to official assurances and presidential videos replace independent verification.

South Africa offers a useful contrast. President Cyril Ramaphosa denied wrongdoing over the Phala Phala farm controversy. His denial settled nothing. Parliament, independent constitutional processes and law-enforcement agencies all became involved. Whatever one’s view of the outcome, South Africa reaffirmed a principle Guyana should embrace: a President’s explanation is never a substitute for independent scrutiny.

Guyana has yet to demonstrate the same constitutional, political and institutional maturity. That is why the controversy over the President’s farm belongs in an oil and gas column. It is no longer about agriculture. It is about whether Guyana’s institutions, and those who lead them, are keeping pace with the demands of oil wealth. It is about whether constitutional office holders are sufficiently independent to place country above party, the Constitution above political convenience, the public interest above partisan loyalty, and yes, a stipend above their integrity.

In his video presentation, President Ali repeatedly invoked the Integrity Commission as if its mere existence answered the concerns that have arisen. It does not. An Integrity Commission is judged not by its statutory existence but by its credibility, its independence and the confidence it inspires. A commission that is neither seen nor heard, and whose work rarely informs public debate, cannot resolve questions of this magnitude simply by being invoked. Institutions earn public confidence by what they do, not by being invoked from the podium.

That is the larger issue confronting Guyana. Oil wealth does not merely test governments; it tests institutions. It asks whether they possess the independence, courage and authority to examine those who exercise power, including the President himself. If they do not, political confidence replaces constitutional accountability, and the Resource Curse ceases to be an academic theory and becomes a national reality.

Too much is now at stake for Guyana to rely on trust alone. Oil has raised the value of public office. It has also raised the price of weak governance. Every major decision involving those who exercise public power will now be examined through the lens of conflicts of interest, institutional independence, and yes, misuse of public office.

Whether intentionally or otherwise, the Ali Administration is helping to define the kind of oil-producing country Guyana will become. Long Creek is not the beginning of the story. It is merely the latest chapter. The earlier chapters lie in the administration of State lands, the concentration of executive power and the weakening of institutions.

This will continue in the next column.

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Letters To The Editor

Independent Commission of Inquiry needed into President’s farm

ByStaff EditorThu, July 9 2026, 2:15 AM GMT-4

Dear Editor,

President Ali was assigned by CARICOM in 2022 to lead the regional effort to reduce the Community’s food import bill by 25% by 2025. That target was not achieved, and CARICOM has since shifted the horizon to 2030.

Earlier this year, in the first budget of his Ali’s second term, the Minister in the Office of the President announced the permanent removal of corporation tax on income from agriculture and agro-processing. No one can accuse our enterprising President of failing to embrace the region’s agricultural ambitions. If anything, he appears to have taken the assignment, shall we say, a bit too personally.

Indeed, while the rest of CARICOM struggled to reduce the region’s food import bill, our President was apparently busy reducing his own dependence on an extravagant presidential salary. He was quietly – very quietly – diversifying both the economy and, it would seem, his own income base. So quietly, in fact, that it took a lifelong friend and party financier, Azruddin Mohamed, to reveal the scale of the enterprise.

The achievements are impressive. Import substitution through herds of Blackbelly sheep from Barbados and halaal cattle from Brazil; eradication of the contraband import of chickens replaced by fattened birds from the Presidential Hatchery; bringing some 150 acres of idle land into productive use; and demonstrating that, in agriculture as elsewhere, some animals are more equal than others.

This is surely a case study waiting to be written. The University of Guyana’s School of Entrepreneurship and Business Innovation could hardly ask for a better illustration of entrepreneurial achievement. The finance faculty might even consider a companion course: Building a Multi-Billion-Dollar Enterprise While Holding One of the Most Demanding Public Offices in the Country.

President Ali often speaks of making Guyana “world-class.” On that score, he may already have succeeded. It is no ordinary feat to lead CARICOM’s campaign to expand regional agriculture while simultaneously finding the time, energy and business acumen to develop what has become the country’s most talked-about private agricultural enterprise.

This is no small feat. In fact, Ali has now won for Guyana its first ever gold medal in multitasking an equivalent of Trump’s Peace Prize.

As he waves proudly to his friends, family and favourites before ascending the podium, here comes the crème de la crème of the Guyana press to ask our dearly beloved president to reflect on his incredible achievements in such a short time, on a fixed salary that is so low that Parliament decided to make it tax-free.  

As the applause dies away and the President prepares to mount the podium, the Guyana press corps edges forward.

“Congratulations, Mr. President. Before you celebrate your remarkable achievements, the Guyanese people would like you to help them understand just how you did it.

1. Mr. President, we understand that you acquired twenty acres of land during the Jagdeo presidency. Under whose administration did you acquire the remaining 130 acres which together comprise your agricultural enterprise, and what process was followed in making them available to you?

2. Were all the environmental approvals obtained before development commenced, and will you publish every permit issued in respect of the project?

3. Can you assure Guyanese that no Government agency gave your enterprise any treatment that would not have been available to any other farmer?

4. Your government has permanently removed corporation tax on agriculture and agro-processing. Given your own substantial interests in that sector, did you declare that interest and absent yourself from any discussions leading to that decision?

5. What is the estimated tax benefit that your enterprise will enjoy because of that measure, and do you accept that many Guyanese will regard the timing as, at the very least, remarkably convenient?

6. Your explanation is that the project was financed by bank loans. Will you authorise the publication of the loan agreements so that the public can judge the matter for itself?

7. Will you also publish the financial statements of the enterprise, together with evidence that all taxes, NIS contributions and other statutory obligations have been fully discharged?

8. Mr. President, you have repeatedly asked Guyanese to trust you. Given the controversies that have followed you throughout your public career, do you accept that many citizens believe trust now requires independent verification rather than personal assurances?

9. Finally, Mr. President, if you have nothing to hide, will you today announce an independent Commission of Inquiry with full powers to examine every aspect of this enterprise, and to publish its findings?

Thank you, Mr. President. Enjoy your medal, and the vast opportunities of fortune and fame from your thankful and appreciative country people.

Yours faithfully,

Christopher Ram