2025 elections GECOM to release SOPs immediately to boost transparency on Sept 1 – chair

Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), (Ret’d) Justice Claudette Singh, has announced that the Statements of Poll (SOPs) from the 2025 General and Regional Elections will be released immediately once available, as part of a renewed push to ensure transparency and public trust in the electoral process.

Speaking to reporters outside Umana Yana, Kingston, Georgetown following Nomination Day on Monday, Singh affirmed that seven political parties were accepted for review and that the Commission remains committed to delivering a credible and efficient election on September 1, 2025.
According to Chair of the electoral body, this mechanism is one of many being put in place to prevent a reoccurrence of the 2020 General and Regional Elections.
“Well, as far as I’m concerned, right, and from what I know, the Secretary is working very hard, and we have been looking at a lot of, many matters, and we are putting things in place…Well, it would be like this. We would be, people would be more vigilant, and there is a process involved when the SOPs, when the SOPs are ready, they would be flushed out, and everyone would see. And if there are any significant problems, they would be flushed immediately,” Singh disclosed.
SOPs are official documents, generated at each polling station on Election Day, record the number of votes cast for each candidate or party.
According to GECOM, SOPs are the foundation of election transparency. Copies are distributed to contesting parties and posted publicly at each polling station. Their immediate release allows voters, observers and political stakeholders to verify results independently, reducing opportunities for manipulation or misinformation.
With this in mind, Justice Singh said GECOM’s Secretariat is working hard and that she is “satisfied” with the systems being put in place for upcoming elections. In fact, she affirmed that both statutory and legislative safeguards have improved since 2020, noting that international technical assistance is also being provided to bolster voter education and operations.
“Well, we have separate persons working with operations. We have somebody who is working with, well, generally, you know, like to assist us in, well, putting out more information. You will find a lot of information going on. Yes, civic and voter regulation, and you will find information going on as well,” she said.

Reform
Further, when asked about criticism of her leadership and perceived bias based on her voting patterns, Singh was direct “I am not politically bias. I’ve never been biased,” she stated. “Voting pattern is a different thing. I vote on positions.”
However, Singh acknowledged flaws in the structure of the Commission itself, particularly the reliance on the casting vote by the Chair, which has often been at the centre of political contention.
“I do not think a casting vote should be in place. That is something that needs constitutional reform. We need to revamp the commission with a different structure,” she said, suggesting Guyana could examine alternative models from other countries. Guyana’s General and Regional Elections is slated for September 1, 2025.
In 2020, during the tabulation of votes for Region Four (Demerara–Mahaica), there was a deviation from the standard use of SOPs. The election report submitted by former Chief Elections Officer (CEO), Keith Lowenfield, claimed that the A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) coalition secured 171,825 votes, while the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) obtained 166,343 votes.
How he arrived at those figures is still unknown, since the certified results from the recount exercise supervised by GECOM and a high-level team from CARICOM pellucidly showed that the PPP/C won with 233,336 votes, while the coalition garnered 217,920.
The recount exercise also highlighted that Mingo had heavily inflated the figures in Region Four – Guyana’s largest voting district — in favour of the then-caretaker APNU+AFC regime.
Nine persons were subsequently charged and are currently before the court in this case, which pertains to the March 2020 general and regional elections. They include former Region Four Returning Officer, Clairmont Mingo; former Chief Elections Officer Keith Lowenfield and his former Deputy, Roxanne Myers.
Also charged are former PNCR Chairperson Volda Lawrence; PNCR activist Carol Smith-Joseph; and GECOM employees Sheffern February, Enrique Livan, Michelle Miller and Denise Babb-Cummings.
Together, these nine defendants confront 33 counts of election-related fraud, focused on alleged efforts to manipulate voting results.