Dear Editor,
“Ali, in his most curated manner, recently courted diaspora investors and skilled professionals with promises of tax breaks and equal opportunity. He painted Guyana as a land of booming growth and welcoming reforms, ripe for their return. Yet he artfully concealed the real Guyana: newly—built crumbling infrastructure, trapped capital, and his own elite quietly shipping wealth to Florida.” While Irfaan Ali is busy begging the diaspora to “come back home and be part of the action,” his own inner circle is quietly hedging their bets in Florida and New York. What kind of leader urges Guyanese to leave the safety and stability of the US, Canada and Europe, while his ministers, friends and financiers are quietly moving their families and parking their wealth offshore? That’s not leadership. That’s a hustle.
This is the obscene contradiction at the heart of Ali’s diaspora charm offensive. On camera, he talks about “equal access” and “co-investment” and “building Guyana together.” Off camera, key PPP elites are wiring out cash, buying homes and businesses in the US, and securing second lives far away from the blackouts, broken health system and forex shortages they refuse to fix. If Guyana is such a paradise in the making, why is the governing class so desperate to secure an escape route?
It is morally grotesque for a president to invite overseas Guyanese to uproot their lives and risk their savings in a country where: The power grid, though heavily—invested in, is still collapsing daily under the weight of growth and corruption. Public health care is so weak that those who can afford it flee abroad for serious treatment. Improperly designed, poorly built roads are deadly, a none—existent public transportation system, unreliable, poor—quality water supplies, and basic state services are a daily fight. You can’t reliably get US dollars out of the banking system, and investors complain they cannot repatriate profits
Ali carefully omits that last part when he speaks to the diaspora. He sells duty-free concessions, tax breaks, and “no corporate tax” for certain sectors, but stays silent on the hard truth: once your money comes in, it may not so easily get out. Your profits can be trapped in Guyana dollars while the political class quietly converts and exports its own wealth at will. The forex crisis becomes a filter: the well-connected get the wire transfers and the ordinary investor gets excuses.
So let’s call this what it is: a capital trap dressed up as patriotism. Ali wants the skills, the remittances and the retirement nest eggs of the diaspora to fuel his mega-project fantasy. But he will not guarantee the one thing any serious investor demands: the right to exit freely with their capital intact. Meanwhile, his own people are not betting their future on Guyana; they are diversifying out of it. That is the loudest vote of no-confidence of all
.A president who truly believes in his country leads by example. He would demand that ministers and top officials declare their foreign assets, restrict cabinet from stashing unexplained wealth abroad, and ensure that every diaspora investor has the same ability to repatriate profits as any minister’s family. Instead, we have the opposite: a political class using Guyana as a cash cow while securing their personal lifeboats in Miami, Orlando and Queens. Ali’s message to the diaspora, stripped of the sugar-coating, is simple: “Bring your money here, but don’t expect guarantees, don’t expect transparency, and don’t expect the same options my friends and family enjoy.” That is not a homecoming invitation; it is a sophisticated–shakedown.
The diaspora must answer with cold reason, not emotional guilt. Love of country does not mean walking blindly into a burning house while the owner is quietly sending his children and cash out the back door. Before any overseas Guyanese even considers returning with their capital, they should demand three basics: A credible fix to the forex and repatriation crisis, guaranteed in law and enforced in practice. Concrete, tangible improvements in electricity, water, roads and health, not just budget speeches. Real accountability for the offshore wealth of public officials. Until then, Ali’s glossy diaspora pitch deserves only one response: if Guyana is so safe and full of opportunity, Mr. President, why are your own people running from the very fire you’re asking us to walk into?