Dear Editor,
As the fifth Guyana Energy Conference unfolds this week in Georgetown, Saudi Arabia’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Adel Al-Jubeir, sits among our most prominent guests. His presence is diplomatically significant and commercially understandable. What is less easy to dismiss is the pattern embedded in the President’s repeated references to Saudi Arabia — references that, taken together, carry the unmistakable suggestion that the Wahabi system of government holds some instructive value for Guyana. That suggestion, however implicit, demands public scrutiny precisely because of the moment in which it is being made.
Guyana needs partners. It does not need models. There is a profound difference, and two realities make that distinction non-negotiable. Wahhabism is not merely a religion — it is a system of state power built on religious exclusivity, one that suppresses Shia Muslims, strips women of fundamental rights, persecutes minorities, and criminalises dissent as heresy. Saudi Arabia has exported this ideology aggressively across the developing world, with documented consequences for social cohesion in plural societies far less diverse than ours.
Guyana is a constitutionally secular republic of Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Afro-Guyanese, Indo-Guyanese, and Indigenous peoples whose national survival has always depended on the principle that no single faith or ethnicity rules the rest. When the President turns repeatedly to Saudi Arabia as a point of reference, the implication — intended or not — is that something in that arrangement is worth emulating. That implication sends a chilling signal to the majority of Guyanese who would have no place in such a system, including the many moderate Guyanese Muslims who reject Wahabi extremism themselves. Implicit messages carry real consequences, and leaders must be held accountable not only for what they say plainly but for what they consistently suggest.
The second concern is equally serious. This energy conference is as much about Guyana’s reputation as it is about revenue. We are asking the world’s most consequential investors and democratic institutions to trust a small nation with extraordinary wealth, and that trust is not built on production figures alone — it is built on the quality of our alliances and the clarity of our values. Saudi Arabia arrives at this table carrying serious liabilities: an unresolved humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen, the unaccounted murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and an authoritarian consolidation of power under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that continues to draw condemnation from Western governments. These are the same Western governments whose capital, technology, and institutional backing underpin Guyana’s oil sector.
In an era of sharpening geopolitical alignment, small states that drift — even subtly — toward ideological association with authoritarian partners do so at measurable cost to their standing with democratic allies. Engage Saudi Arabia — yes. Negotiate with them — absolutely. But what must not be allowed to take root, even through inference and implication, is the notion that their system of governance offers anything meaningful to a nation as richly diverse as ours. The conference theme is “Building Tomorrow’s Future Today.” The future worth building is one that reflects who we are — not who our richest guests happen to be.