Guyana at the Crossroads: Beyond Tribalism Toward Competence

On September 1, 2025, Guyana goes to the polls. We do so at a moment of profound possibility and grave peril.

In her essay The Trouble with Tribes, Susan Fowler describes the Troxler effect: fix your gaze on a single red dot, and the surrounding blue circle disappears. Focus long enough, and everything beyond the dot fades away. This is the trap of tribalism. When we see only what benefits our group, we lose sight of the larger community. In Guyana, this narrowing of vision has already begun to unravel our families, our institutions, and our national fabric.

Guyana now sits atop an estimated eleven billion oil-equivalent barrels in the Stabroek Block. By year’s end, the Natural Resource Fund is projected to hold more than US $3 billion.

This wealth is not the property of one tribe, one party, or one government. It is the inheritance of every Guyanese citizen—a patrimony to be shared equitably.

The fundamental questions before us are clear:

How can Guyana’s energy resources be best used to improve lives and transform the country and region?

And how can we channel oil revenues into education, infrastructure, and public services while avoiding the failures of other petrostates?

These are not partisan questions.

They are national questions that demand open, rational, and independent dialogue.

In the Gospel of Luke (14:1, 7–14), Jesus, observing how guests scramble for places of honor, cautions: “When you are invited, do not sit down at the place of honor… For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. Instead, when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.”

This parable strikes at the heart of Guyana’s political moment. Our oil wealth is the banquet. The temptation of our leaders is to seize the highest seat for their tribe, to distribute privilege only among loyalists, and to measure success in the currency of exclusion. But the Gospel calls us to humility and generosity: to widen the table, to invite those left outside, and to make belonging—not advantage—the true measure of leadership.

For too long, Guyanese politics has been trapped in the Machiavellian logic that “it is better to be feared than loved.” Yet even Machiavelli himself reminded leaders that the strongest fortress is the affection of the people. Fear divides. Affection builds.

Tomorrow, we must demand leaders who seek not just the loyalty of their tribe but also the affection of the Guyanese people as a whole. The psychological needs of choice, connection, and competence are real. Tribal identity gives us belonging. But belonging should not mean exclusion. Our leaders must resist the logic of “us versus them” and instead create the conditions for collaboration across our many tribes. Malaysia and Singapore show us that multiethnic governance is possible. Guyana must adapt such lessons to our own history and circumstances.

To envision Guyana as a single, multiracial, multiethnic tribe is not naïve—it is necessary. Competence, not ethnicity, must guide education, housing, and political priorities. The Sovereign Wealth Fund must become a forum for all Guyanese voices. As Guyana votes, the GBJ calls on every citizen and every leader to look beyond the red dot of tribal interest and toward the  circle of national unity. Let us remember the wisdom of Luke: that the true measure of leadership is not who sits at the head table but who ensures that the poor, the marginalized, and the voiceless are welcomed into the feast.

Tomorrow, let us vote not as divided tribes but as one Guyanese people.

Read the original 2021 essay here

Guyana Business Journal 

August 31, 2025