The Test of Power: Can Guyana Build Beyond Its Leaders?
The Test of Power: Can Guyana Build Beyond Its Leaders?
OPINION BY: Hem Kumar— September 2026
In a widely circulated opinion piece titled “The Courage to become Unnecessary” Kojo M. Parris has done something unusual in Guyanese public life: he has publicly and forcefully challenged a man he plainly admires, knows personally, and credits with consequential achievements.
He is not an opposition voice – he served under the Jagdeo presidency as Guyana’s Honorary Consul in South Africa .
That takes courage. It is easier to criticize a political opponent than to question a friend; easier still to remain silent when proximity, history and personal regard make criticism uncomfortable. Parris has instead placed a difficult proposition before the country: that Bharrat Jagdeo’s extraordinary political gifts, and the centrality he has acquired in Guyana’s affairs, may now be contributing to the institutional weakness that threatens the country’s democratic future.
His essay- part personal memoir, part political autopsy; deserves to be read closely, and argued with closely, rather than filed under either “hit piece” or “hagiography.” It is neither. It is a friend’s brief against a friend, and that makes it worth taking seriously on its own terms.
The question he raises is fundamental: is Guyana building institutions strong enough to outlast its leaders, or a political order increasingly dependent on the authority, access and intervention of a few?
Credit where it is due
No serious assessment of Guyana’s contemporary political history can deny Jagdeo’s formidable abilities or his record of achievement.
He has been among the most consequential political figures of the post-1992 era. His political energy, tactical discipline, command of complex policy matters and international visibility are undeniable. The Low Carbon Development Strategy gave Guyana a distinctive voice in global climate discussions long before the country’s petroleum wealth transformed its economic prospects. His influence in placing Guyana at the centre of climate, forest and energy conversations is part of the national record.
There is also a serious argument that the PPP’s return to office after 1992 helped restore political confidence and social inclusion to many Indo-Guyanese communities that had experienced long periods of marginalisation. Indigenous communities, too, became more central to national political and development discourse, even though major questions remain about land rights, consultation, representation and the distribution of benefits.
Under the present PPP-C administration, President Irfaan Ali can fairly point to visible development: roads, bridges, housing, schools, hospitals, energy projects, expanding private investment, and a country moving at a pace that would have been difficult to imagine a decade ago. For many Guyanese, particularly those who have obtained employment, contracts, new housing, improved roads, scholarships, training or other opportunities, the government’s case is not abstract. Development has a physical presence in their communities and in their lives. That reality must be acknowledged.
The other side of progress
Yet development is not only measured by concrete, cranes, new vehicles, hotels or the velocity of construction.
It is also measured by whether a citizen can obtain a birth certificate, pension, land document, police response, utility connection, business approval or medical service without a political contact, an influential intermediary, a public appeal, or an appearance at a ministerial outreach.This is where Parris’s warning has force.
Ministerial outreaches can be useful. They take officials directly into communities, sometimes resolve long-standing cases and can give voice to citizens who feel ignored by distant offices. In a country with difficult geography, uneven access to services and communities far from Georgetown, no responsible observer should casually dismiss face-to-face government intervention.
But there is another interpretation.
If thousands of citizens must wait for a minister, President, Vice President or politically connected figure to visit their region before routine matters can be resolved, then the problem is larger than the individual case. It suggests that the normal machinery of the State is either too slow, too opaque, too inaccessible or too unresponsive.
Outreach should be an addition to a functioning public service—not a substitute for one.
“A modern State is not one that brings government closer only when the cameras arrive. It is one that works when no minister, no party official and no social-media influencer is present.”
Jagdeo, Ali and responsibility
The public debate cannot be confined to Bharrat Jagdeo alone.
President Ali is the elected head of government and head of state. Jagdeo is the Vice President and the PPP-C’s most powerful strategist and political operator. Their partnership is central to the administration’s direction, its achievements and its failures.
It is therefore neither fair nor credible to praise President Ali for the roads, hospitals, housing programmes, international investments and energy agenda, while isolating Jagdeo as responsible for governance failures. Nor is it reasonable to credit Jagdeo for the administration’s political and economic gains while treating the President as merely ceremonial when difficult questions arise. They govern in tandem. They must be judged in tandem.
If Jagdeo represents the political machinery and strategic centre of the government, Ali represents its constitutional face and executive authority. Where the system works, both are entitled to credit. Where institutions appear weak, decisions seem excessively centralised, agencies lack independence, or citizens believe access is more valuable than procedure, both bear responsibility. The issue is not whether Guyana needs strong leadership. In a rapidly changing petroleum economy, it plainly does.
The issue is whether strong leaders are strengthening the State—or whether the State is becoming increasingly dependent on strong leaders.
“If Jagdeo laid the foundations of a politics centered on access, President Ali has had six years to decide whether to dismantle that structure—or furnish it, enlarge it and call it modern governance.”
Oil, opportunity and inequality
Guyana is experiencing an economic transformation unlike any in its modern history. Oil revenues, foreign investment and construction have created new wealth, new businesses and new ambitions. That cannot be wished away, nor should it be condemned simply because it is uneven.
Foreign investment is not inherently exploitation. Private enterprise is not inherently corruption. Wealth creation is not inherently injustice. Guyana needs investors, engineers, contractors, financiers, builders, entrepreneurs and international partners. It needs jobs beyond the public sector, productive businesses, technology transfer, infrastructure and global markets.
But the country also needs to ask who is benefiting most, who is being left behind, and whether the new economy is deepening a divide between those with capital, contracts, land, connections and information—and those who have only their labor.
The concern is increasingly visible: a new class of politically connected or commercially advantaged beneficiaries is emerging alongside workers, pensioners, small vendors, farmers, public servants and young people who still struggle with rising prices, housing costs, food bills, transport, insecure employment and limited bargaining power.
“What we are witnessing is the steady emergence of a stark two-tiered society: a privileged bourgeois class accumulating wealth and influence, alongside a growing proletariat left to bear the burdens of economic insecurity.”
That does not mean every successful businessperson is a crony, every contractor is corrupt, or every foreign company is an imperialist predator. Such language can obscure more than it reveals. But neither should the country accept a development model in which public wealth becomes private privilege, and national prosperity is celebrated through luxury consumption while working people cannot feel secure in their daily lives.
The real question is whether oil wealth is creating broad-based social mobility—or merely moving Guyana toward a sharper class hierarchy.
“Oil has not merely expanded Guyana’s economy; it is rapidly rearranging its class structure, rewarding those nearest to contracts, capital, land and political access while many workers struggle to keep pace with prices.”
The Jagan question
This is where the legacy of Dr. Cheddi Jagan becomes relevant. Jagan’s politics were rooted in workers, peasants, social justice, national independence and a suspicion of economic arrangements in which Guyanese labour and natural wealth served interests beyond Guyana. He believed political independence was incomplete if economic power remained concentrated in the hands of a privileged few or controlled from outside the country.
That legacy does not require Guyana to retreat from the world, reject foreign capital or romanticize poverty. A small state with major development needs cannot prosper through isolation. But it does require vigilance.
“Cheddi Jagan’s political inheritance was not hostility to development or foreign engagement. It was a conviction that development must serve national independence, working people and the many—not foreign capital and a locally connected few.”
Guyana must negotiate firmly, regulate competently, protect its environment, collect what is owed, train its people, defend labour standards, build local capacity and ensure that the revenues from its resources produce lasting public goods.
“Anti-imperialism in the twenty-first century need not mean isolation. It means negotiating from strength, demanding transparency, protecting sovereignty, and ensuring that foreign investment serves a Guyanese social contract.”
Hospitals, schools, water systems, energy security, housing, reliable roads, pensions, competitive wages, safer communities, independent institutions and dignified work must be the practical proof that oil belongs to the people.
If the new economy enriches a narrow circle while the wider society becomes more anxious, more indebted and more dependent on patronage, then the country will have betrayed not only Jagan’s social-democratic and nationalist inheritance, but the promise of oil itself.
“The oil boom must not become a conveyor belt from public wealth to private privilege.”
A debate Guyana needs
Parris’s article can be challenged. It should be challenged.
Some will argue that his account understates the scale of development now underway. Others will say it does not sufficiently recognise the obstacles faced by any government governing a divided society with an overstretched public service, inherited institutional weaknesses and a sudden oil boom. Some will contend that Jagdeo’s political force is precisely what has allowed Guyana to negotiate confidently on the international stage and avoid being overwhelmed by powerful foreign interests. Others will argue that such concentration of influence, regardless of the individual’s intentions, weakens ministers, civil servants, boards, regulators and Parliament.
Both sides deserve to be heard.
But no side should evade the core democratic question: can a citizen obtain fair treatment from the Guyanese State without being politically aligned, personally connected, publicly visible or fortunate enough to catch the attention of someone powerful?
That is the standard against which every government must be measured.
The Mandela challenge
Nelson Mandela understood that even the most beloved leader must eventually prove that the country he helped shape can stand without him. By leaving office after one term, when he could have remained, Mandela demonstrated that the health of a democracy matters more than the permanence of an individual.
Guyana’s leaders need not imitate Mandela’s history; no country’s journey is identical to another’s. But they can emulate the principle.
“The test of reform is not how efficiently the powerful can intervene; it is how rarely ordinary people need them to.”
Bharrat Jagdeo has the stature, experience and influence to help build a Guyana in which ministries function without rescue, public servants serve without fear, regulators act without political instruction, Parliament scrutinises without ritual, and citizens receive what is due to them without having to seek the favour of a leader. President Ali has the constitutional authority and the political opportunity to insist that this becomes the defining work of his presidency.
If the Jagdeo-Ali era leaves behind stronger institutions, more equal citizenship, a capable public service, broader prosperity and a politics less dependent on personal access, it will deserve lasting credit.
If it leaves behind a richer country but a weaker republic—one in which power remains concentrated, opportunity remains uneven and public confidence depends on who knows whom—then the oil boom will have failed its most important test.
“The highest form of political achievement is not to become indispensable. It is to make oneself unnecessary.”
That is the debate before Guyana.
We invite readers to join it: Has the country’s development model strengthened the State and widened opportunity, or has it made too many citizens more dependent on political access and elite connections? What specific reforms would ensure that Guyana’s resource wealth builds a republic that serves every citizen, regardless of race, region, class or party allegiance?
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