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.