Recently, the electoral pattern across Latin America and the Caribbean has been for incumbent governments to be thrown out by voters angered by poor economic performance. In Guyana, President Irfaan Ali of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) has bucked the trend: in polls on 1 September, he was re-elected to serve another five-year term.

Newly re-elected President Irfaan Ali will have to move fast on promises to convert his country's sizable oil income into tangible benefits for Guyana's poor, beyond huge prestige infrastructure projects.