AG slams Opposition’s last-minute push for prisoners to vote

Mere months before the 2025 General and Regional Elections, opposition-nominated commissioners on the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) have been pressing for prisoners to be allowed to vote.
However, their calls have been deemed “obstructionist” by Attorney General Anil Nandlall, who on Tuesday evening reminded that while in government from 2015 to 2020 and previously from 1964 to 1992, this same group of politicians never pioneered a policy to allow prisoners to vote.
“They governed the country for 28 years and then another five [2015-2020]; they never championed the cause of prisoners voting for all those years. The laws have never changed. “How come, three months before elections, this is an issue of sudden contention?” he questioned during his weekly programme “Issues in the News”.
“They didn’t know they wanted prisoners to vote when they were in government?” he added.
Noting that the commissioners pushing this agenda “have been in politics since before I was born”, Nandlall said the matter could have been dealt with at any other time.
Historically, prisoners in Guyana do not vote. While the AG said he is unclear of the exact reason this system was passed down from the British, it may be related to the loss of freedom for those incarcerated.
“I suspect that philosophically, it may have been felt that that part of their freedom, the right to vote…would have been curtailed by your imprisonment.” He explained.
“The Constitution that confers the fundamental rights and freedoms on the citizens also subjects those rights to restrictions. These restrictions include persons who lost their liberty and are in custody due to sentences and orders of courts of competent jurisdiction. Therefore, the same way that prisoners lose their right to liberty, it includes their right to vote. Prisoners generally lose a number of freedoms by virtue of the imprisonment. These will obviously include the right to vote. This is provided for by the Constitution, the very instrument that gives them the freedom,” Nandlall added.
To change this, he said a policy has to be formulated and the law adjusted. This too must be accompanied by administrative and logistic arrangements for inmate voting to be made possible.
“You can’t spring that on a population and spring that on the elections commission three months before elections. You clearly want to frustrate the holding of elections; you want to obstruct elections from taking place, and that will not happen,” he affirmed.