Irfaan Ali, the outgoing president of Guyana, announced his victory for a second term in the presidential elections held on Monday in the small South American country, which has the world’s largest oil reserves per capita.

Ali (45 years old) told AFP in a brief phone statement, “The numbers are clear, the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (center-left) achieved a landslide victory, we have a large majority and we are ready to move the country forward,” noting that no official announcement has yet been made by the electoral commission.

The leader of the People’s Progressive Party built his campaign on a promise to lift his 850,000 citizens out of poverty thanks to oil revenues. In his second five-year term, the president will also have to manage the sensitive issue of Essequibo, the resource-rich region claimed by the large neighboring country Venezuela.

The electoral commission has not yet published any results from Monday’s elections.

According to international observers from both the Carter Center and the European Union, the elections were pluralistic and the election day was free of “serious violations,” but the observers noted an “undeserved advantage” for the outgoing president who “disrupted a level playing field” during the campaign by launching many projects.

Jason Carter, head of the Carter Center observation mission, said Guyana “due to its new wealth, the world is turning its eyes to it, and Guyana will soon become a rich country. The question is whether it will be a rich country inhabited by poor people, or a rich country based on a democracy that does not exclude people from the system.”

Guyana is a country on the northern coast of South America, gained independence from the United Kingdom on May 26, 1966, became a republic on February 23, 1970, and remains a member of the Commonwealth. Oil revenues have quadrupled the state budget in five years (6.7 billion dollars in 2025) with the highest economic growth in Latin America (43.6% in 2024).

Guyana began oil exploitation in 2019 and hopes to increase production from 650,000 barrels per day to over one million barrels by 2030.