President Irfaan Ali’s Independence Address

Our dear Prime Minister; the Chancellor of the Judiciary; the Speaker of the National Assembly; all the people of Guyana; a dear friend of Guyana, Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados; former Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, a dear friend of Guyana; members of the diplomatic community; and importantly on this significant occasion, a friend of Guyana, a sister nation, represented this evening in the form of the Vice President of Ghana. Please put your hands together for our dear sister who has graced us with love and friendship, distinguished heads of international and regional organisations and all the members of Cabinet and members of Parliament, and above all, my fellow Guyanese.

Sixty years ago, tonight, the Golden Arrowhead rose. It rose above a people long exploited. It rose above a land long claimed by others. It rose, and it has never come down and so, as long as we live, it never will. Tonight, on the Diamond Jubilee of our Independence, we stand before the world, not as supplicants, not as the forgotten, but as a sovereign people, proud, unbroken, and unafraid.

We are a nation that dared to dream, a nation that endured division and regression, and yet we are a nation that has emerged against all odds as one of the most remarkable stories of transformation this century has produced, and I ask you to put your hands together to all the men and women who toil every day to ensure this transformation, all our former leaders, our former presidents, our current leaders, and importantly the heads of services standing here on this stage, and all our men and women in uniform, we need to applaud them for their bravery, their continuous service, and their life of dedication to this country.

Let us remember the Guyana of May 26th, 1966. We were born into independence, poor in wealth but rich in hope. We were a nation in name but a nation with a dependent economy. In fact, the sugar estates were still in foreign hands, the bauxite mines, the banks, the commanding heights of commerce. Two British companies alone, Booker McConnell and Jessel Securities controlled our largest agricultural enterprises. The Demerara Bauxite Company and Reynolds Bauxite accounted for 45% of our foreign exchange earnings. We had a new flag, a new anthem, a new coat of arms, but we were in fact still British Guiana by another name.

And we were fractured, deliberately so. Colonial rule had engineered division among our peoples, African and Indian, Indigenous and Portuguese, Chinese and Mixed, pitting community against community, constructing social hierarchies where cooperation should have flourished. We were born as a nation with wounds not of our own making. And then, as if that were not enough, even before the ink dried on our independence, a neighbour rose to challenge our very existence. Through persistent threats, territorial claims, and periodic acts of intimidation the controversy casts a long shadow over investment, confidence, and development for decades.

Venezuela laid claim to more than two thirds of our sovereign territory. Tonight, we celebrate that sovereign territory here in Essequibo, in the beautiful island of Fort Island. The Essequibo, 159,000 square kilometres of our heartland, home to our people, rich with our resources, was declared by Caracas to belong to them. From the very first breath of our nationhood the sword hung over our land. That was the Guyana of 1966. We could have collapsed. Many said we would, but we did not. The path was not always straight. There were years of hardship, years when Guyanese, by the tens of thousands, packed their bags and left, so many that today more Guyanese live outside our borders than within them. We know that loss. We honour those who left, and tonight on this diamond jubilee we call them home, even as we praise those who remain behind to struggle to advance and to progress.

Through those difficult decades, this nation endured, our people endured, and then Guyana turned a corner. 60 years after independence. We stand before the world in a position our founders could scarcely have imagined. We are today the fastest growing economy on earth. Let that settle for a moment. Fastest growing not in this hemisphere, not in the Caribbean, but on the entire planet. And we did that together as One People, One Nation, One Destiny. We did that as One Guyana.

Our GDP, which stood at $229 million at Independence, now exceeds $75 billion in purchasing power terms. Our per capita income, once $344 is today projected to approach $38,000 per capita by 2028. In a single decade, we have leapt from the margins into the front ranks of the world economies. That is a significant achievement, and every Guyanese has earned the right to be proud.

The IMF confirms that Guyana led the world with average real GDP growth of 47% per year between 2022 and 2024. We recorded double-digit growth for six consecutive years. We are now building our Natural Resources Fund. We are setting aside from day one for the children of tomorrow. It grows with every single additional revenue that comes back to our country.

That is why, my dear brothers and sisters, we must spend, but spend with an understanding of what is required in the future, spend with an understanding of what is our priority, spend with an understanding that we must take care of tomorrow today, but wealth on paper is not a nation transformed. A nation is transformed by what it builds for its people.

Our 2024 Budget exceeded $1 trillion Guyanese dollars for the first time in our history. Oil production from the offshore Stabroek block now surpasses 915,000 barrels per day, and we are South America’s third largest oil producer. We have invested massively in education, in health care, in housing. From 2020 to 2025 we constructed or rehabilitated over 10,000 roads and 430 bridges, bringing the power of connection to communities that independence had left behind.

Today, how many would have imagined that we would have been celebrating our diamond jubilee here in Fort Island, crossing the rivers and establishing the fundamental truth that Essequibo belongs completely to Guyana.

A landmark US$100 million STEM initiative in partnership with ExxonMobil is building the knowledge economy of tomorrow, beginning at the University of Guyana, and tomorrow morning we will formally set our footprints in the history of healthcare when from Guyana with our new surgeon, Mantra Freedom 60 will perform a cardiac surgery from Guyana to India.

The longest distance surgery in the history of mankind will be performed from the shores of Guyana tomorrow. This is the country we are building, not afraid to embrace any tool that is necessary to position us as not only a player in the global economy but a competitive player looking to take its place in the front row of global stability, resilience, and prosperity, but as we have said before, that growth must be on the foundation of humility, and that growth and that development must not only lead to the prosperity of the people of Guyana, it must lead to the prosperity of the people of this region of our CARICOM region, and that is why tonight I salute all those leaders who have joined us in this celebration.

On the world stage, this small nation has served three times as an elected member of the United Nations Security Council, and across those terms we have held the presidency of the council on six separate occasions. That record demonstrates our capacity, our courage, and our skill, and proves that Guyana belongs in the councils of the world.

Under the theme Partnership for Peace and Prosperity, we raised our voice for the Global South, for Africa, for small island states, for the voiceless and overlooked. We are no longer forgotten. We are a force, and we are here to stay, but I must speak a hard truth on this joyous night.

60 years of sovereignty, and still, still our territorial integrity is under assault. Venezuela has not relented, it has not restrained itself, it has not respected the binding orders of the world’s highest court. And now, as the ICJ deliberates its judgement, Venezuela’s acting president, has declared before the court itself that Venezuela will not accept a ruling in Guyana’s favour.

This is not the language of a neighbour, this is not the language of international law, this is not the language of peace. That is why tonight my language cannot be ambiguous. The Essequibo is Guyana’s. It has never been Venezuelan, nor was it ever Spanish, and for more than a century and a quarter since the 1899 Arbitral Award settled its boundary, Guyana has indisputably included Essequibo. It is and will remain Guyanese.

The ICJ has affirmed this jurisdiction to hear and determine this matter. The memoranda have been submitted. The oral hearings have concluded. The court now deliberates. We are confident in our case; we are confident in international law. We stand firm on the validity of the 1899 Award, and we say to the world gathered here tonight and watching from afar that in defence of our country we are united in determination, and we sing in clear voice and stout hearts the words of our Song of the Republic, so that all may hear the cry of our soil.

From Pakaraima’s peaks of pow’r
To Corentyne’s lush sands,
Her children pledge each faithful hour
To guard Guyana’s lands.
To foil the shock of rude invader
Who’d violate her earth,
To cherish and defend forever
The State that gave them birth.
We are grateful for the support of the United States, of CARICOM, of the Commonwealth, the OAS, and all our partner nations across the world, who have stood with Guyana and affirmed that this threat to our sovereignty is unacceptable.

Tonight, on this 60th anniversary of our independence, we say to all the people of those nations and their governments with immense gratitude in our hearts, thank you for standing with us. Thank you for standing for fairness. Thank you for standing for justice and for peace. But let me also say this, and I say it with full sincerity: Guyana holds no malice toward the people of Venezuela. None. The Venezuelan people are our neighbours, they are our kinsmen across a shared geography, a shared history, a shared Caribbean and South American heritage.

We know that the ordinary men and women of Venezuela have not chosen this dispute. We know that many among them yearn, as all people yearn, simply for peace, for dignity, for a better life for their children. To the people of Venezuela on this night of our 60th anniversary as a neighbouring sovereign state, we extend the hand of friendship.

We will always defend our sovereignty. We will always defend our territorial integrity, but we will do so through peaceful means, through the courts, through diplomacy, through the principles of the United Nations Charter, and the rule of international law, not through belligerence, not through aggression, never through war, and when this matter is resolved, as it will be resolved, Guyana offers to work with Venezuela, as with all friendly nations, to build a hemisphere that is safer, more prosperous and more just for every soul within it. This is not weakness; this is a measure of our character as an open and friendly people committed to living in peace and to promoting prosperity.

And now I speak directly to my brothers and sisters, the people of Guyana, to every Guyanese alive tonight, wherever you are on God’s earth, to those gathered at this great ceremony, to those watching in your communities, your villages, your homes across all 10 regions of our nation, to those of our diaspora in New York and Florida, in London and Toronto, in Suriname and the Caribbean, who carry Guyana in their hearts across every ocean. To you, I say 60 years is a great achievement, but it is just the beginning. Sixty years is a foundation.

We have a choice before us, either to carry the pain of our history like an open wound relived each day in bitterness and division, or to heal it. Sixty years of Independence calls us towards a higher covenant to build a nation anchored in love, ennobled by honest labour, strengthened by unity, and guided by enduring faith, through shared ambition, shared families, compassionate communities, and a deep and abiding pride in country, we can shape a Guyana where democracy and equity are not distant aspirations but living principles embracing collective trust by all in that noble undertaking, every Guyanese, regardless of origin or circumstance, becomes a bearer of the nation’s spirit, each citizen a reflection of the enduring soul of Guyana itself. Look at what we have built, look at what we have endured, look at how far we have come from that fragile, fractured, dependent nation that raised its flag at midnight on May 25th, 1966.

The roads we are building connect not just communities but destinies. The schools we are opening do not merely teach children to read and write, they teach children to dream. The hospitals we are building do not merely heal bodies; they affirm that every Guyanese life has worth. That is what it means to govern for all. This is what One Guyana means in practice.

Our journey shows our promise. It offers a pathway to a brighter future, and we are all well on our way. The work ahead belongs to every one of us. To the young Guyanese who stand on this transformative period, I say you are not responsible for the divisions of the past, but you hold responsibility for the unity of the future.

Do not inherit old prejudices, do not repeat old arguments, do not allow the past to define the limits of your imagination. You are the generation that will finally, fully and irreversibly make Guyana whole. African and Indian, Indigenous and Portuguese, Chinese and Mixed, Christian and Hindu and Muslims, from the coastland and the hinterland, from Georgetown to Lethem, from Linden to New Amsterdam, from Region One to Region 10, we are, all of us, One Guyana. One Guyana in our diversity, One Guyana in our destiny.

One Guyana does not mean we are all the same, it means we are all equal, it means every child in every region has the same rights. Every child and every region have the same right for development, for advancement, for prosperity, for the well-being of all our people. The world has too often been told that diversity is a weakness, that difference must lead to division. The multi-ethnic societies are destined for permanent fracture. Guyana rejects that false premise. We are proving before the eyes of the world that a people drawn from many histories can still build one destiny.

The oil beneath our waters is not the property of a government, it is the property of our people. It belongs to every Guyanese who came before us and to every Guyanese yet to be born. It is ours, all of ours, and we will guard it together. We hold it in trust, we spend it with purpose, we save it with discipline. We must build a national development platform rooted in unity, democracy, the rule of law, and respect for each other.

We have 60 years of shared experience to guide us, 60 years of struggle, 60 years of achievements, 60 years of lessons, but progress must be protected. Prosperity must be sustained. Unity must be strengthened by institutions that are stable, practical, fair, and fit for the realities of our country. That is why constitutional reform must be approached with care, not as a contest for advantage, not as a weapon of division, but as a solemn national responsibility with a long-term interest of Guyana and future generations at its centre.

At this stage of our national journey, no one should seek to divide Guyana in pursuit of power. Government and opposition, private sector and labour, civil society and citizens, coastline and hinterland, no one should seek to divide. Instead, we must come together. We must come together and work in harmony. We must work hard, relentlessly, so that we can build and pass on a Guyana that is strong, stable, and prosperous.

We must reject the poison of zero-sum politics, the destructive belief that one group can rise only if another falls. That belief helped to divide our nationalist movement. It weakened the spirit of unity that made independence possible. And 60 years later, we must heal those wounds.

But a lesson of our history is clear, without harmony, there can be no true unity. Without unity, independence is never complete, and without a united people, progress can never be secure. The independence covenant was signed in hope, and it must be fulfilled in unity.

The task before us is clear; we must build a nation in which all our people can live a life of fulfillment, life of honour, and life of dignity. There is no ceiling on what this nation can become. No threat will define our future. There is no boundary, none, on the ambition, the creativity, the enterprise, and the dignity of Guyanese people.

So let us march forward. March not with arrogance, but with confidence. March not with division, but with unity. March not with the burdens of the past, but with the promise of the future. The Golden Arrowhead was raised 60 years ago in joy and expectation. Tonight, we raise it again in glory and determination. It rises for every Guyanese who kept faith with his country, through every trial of our history. It rises for every farmer and fisherman, every teacher and nurse, every miner and entrepreneur, every mother and father who sacrificed so their children might stand taller. It rises for those who left and for those who stayed. It rises for those who will never leave because they lie in Guyanese earth and their spirit is in the soil and their love is in our hearts.

Sixty years, One People, One Nation, One Destiny, One Guyana, now and forever. Long live the Cooperative Republic of Guyana. Long live the great people of Guyana. God bless our beloved country. God bless our nation and may God continue to guide our progress and prosperity.

Happy 60th anniversary. Happy Independence to one and all, and God bless all of you here all across Guyana and all across our diaspora. Thank you very much.

God bless our friends, our allies, our neighbours, and all those who stand with us together in peace, love, and unity.

God bless you all, Thank you.