Op-Ed: “Woe to You, Hypocrites”—President Ali’s Church Visit Is Political Theatre, Not Piety

by Randy Gopaul
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.”

— Matthew 23:27 (NIV)

In a nation where over 60% of the population identifies as Christian, President Irfaan Ali’s recent appearance at a 24-hour Christian prayer service was not a gesture of spiritual reflection, it was a calculated act of political performance. Draped in scripture and staged on a national platform, his speech on “gratitude and hope” rang hollow against the backdrop of his government’s record of injustice, repression, and corruption.

This is not the first time we’ve seen the PPP weaponize public religion as a shield for their moral failures and a tool for electoral manipulation. But this most recent act—standing before hundreds of Christians, quoting scripture, while presiding over a government that has persecuted the poor, brutalized Black citizens, and stolen land from Afro-Guyanese families—was particularly grotesque.

Let’s call it what it is, hypocrisy of the highest order.

This is the same President who sent bulldozers into Mocha Arcadia, evicting working-class African Guyanese families with military precision, under the pretense of development. Some of these families were faithful churchgoers, community leaders, mothers and fathers. They were not obstacles to progress, they were simply in the way of profiteering and land grabs disguised as public infrastructure.

And what of the Henry boys, slaughtered in the fields of West Berbice? President Ali stood before their grieving parents, made promises of justice, and delivered nothing but deflection and delay. No convictions. No accountability. No closure. Only silence and spin.

And now, Adrianna Younge. A child dies under mysterious circumstances, and again the President speaks of “hope” while his government arrests protesters and labels citizens as terrorists for demanding answers. He says he hears the people. But he acts like a man who only hears polling numbers.

It is no coincidence that this show of spiritual solidarity comes as the next general election looms. Ali and his surrogates know that Christianity in Guyana is more than a faith, it is a cultural foundation, a source of identity, morality, and history, especially within the Afro-Guyanese community. So, they trot out Bishop Juan Edghill, repackaged as Public Works Minister, to lend clerical legitimacy to their regime of repression.

But no pastor’s robe can whitewash the stain of corruption.

This is the same government that has prioritized mega-projects not to uplift the people, but to funnel billions into the hands of cronies, contractors, and foreign partners, while public servants, teachers, nurses, civil servants, scrape to survive on stagnant wages. This is the same leadership that sells off our natural resources in shady deals, then lectures the public about gratitude and contentment.

There is nothing wrong with a President attending a church service. But when it is done with the intent to exploit faith for votes, to pose as a man of the people while betraying their most basic needs, it becomes a spiritual fraud.

Christians are not fools. We are not pawns to be manipulated during election cycles. Our gospel is not a prop. Our faith cannot be co-opted by men who worship power and call it hope.

President Ali does not speak for the church. He cannot. Because the church, in its truest form, stands with the poor, the broken, and the oppressed. And no amount of staged appearances can hide the truth of his government’s betrayal of those very people.

Let the faithful remember, God is not mocked.