Guyana, a South American country, has elected its first Muslim President, Irfan Ali, to a second five-year term despite the official results of Monday's general election not yet being announced.

Guyana President Irfan Ali declared victory in this week's general and regional elections after the People's Progressive Party (PPP) won seven of the country's ten electoral districts with over 240,000 votes.The newly formed political party Investing in the Nation (WIN), established just three months ago, came in second with approximately 109,000 votes.

The 45-year-old Ali, the first Muslim head of state in the South American country and now elected for a second term, campaigned on a promise to use the country's vast oil reserves, discovered in 2019, to improve infrastructure and reduce poverty while overcoming territorial tensions with neighboring Venezuela.It is not yet clear how many seats each party will hold in the 65-member parliament, but current Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo told local media that the PPP will have a “larger majority” than in the last elections in 2020.

Despite lower turnout than the last election, the PPP appears to have increased its share of the vote. The long-time opposition National Unity Alliance is in third place.Much of this election has been shaped by the question of how the parties will manage the revenues from the massive oil reserves discovered by oil giant ExxonMobil in 2019.

The company says it has found billions of barrels of oil in Guyana's waters and on its land since 2019, quadrupling the state budget.

Guyana, with a population of approximately 800,000, is currently one of the countries with the highest proven crude oil reserves per capita in the world and one of the fastest-growing economies in the region.However, opposition parties argue that oil revenues are not being fairly distributed to groups linked to the PPP, while the ruling party denies these claims.

Speaking to the Guardian on Wednesday, Irfan Ali said, “The results are clear, according to the Guyana Electoral Commission. The numbers are clear. The people have spoken with an overwhelming majority. We won these elections by a significant margin.”

Who is Irfan Ali?

Born in 1980, Muhammad Irfan Ali was born in the village of Leonora in Guyana's Demerara West Coast region to Bibi Shariman Neshaw and Mohamed Osman Ali, the son of an Indian-Guyanese Muslim family.

He is a Guyanese politician who has served as Guyana's tenth and current president since 2020. A member of the People's Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C), Ali previously served as Minister of Housing and Water from 2009 to 2015. He is the first Muslim to hold office and the second Muslim head of state in the Americas after Noor Hassanali of Trinidad and Tobago.

In April 2024, Ali, as a Muslim, described the occupying regime's attacks on the Gaza Strip as “nothing short of genocide” and  “Terrorism has no place in our modern world or in any religious text.” added. (ILKHA)