…dismisses Nigel Hughes’ claims of early elections
Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday announced that the next General and Regional Elections will be within the period of October to November 2025, noting that rumours of an early elections are “a bunch of nonsense.”
“We’re hoping to have a transparent election,” he told reporters at his weekly press conference.
He was at the time responding to claims made by Alliance For Change Leader, Nigel Hughes that the People’s Progressive Party is in elections mode.
In a post made two days ago on social media, Hughes said among other things, “The tea leaves are suggesting that there is likely to be an early election. Government Ministers are holding public meetings. There can be no election without the census results being published first and a clean electoral list. The bloated list of electors will not cut it. Why subject the country to another problematic election.”
To ensure a fair and transparent process, the vice president said a manual will be prepared and circulated ahead of the elections to the media, political parties and other interested stakeholders, outlining the “duties, obligations, responsibilities, rights of every member who will be part of the conduct of elections.” This includes members of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) and by extension, polling agents.
Guyana’s previous election process lasted from March 2 to August 2, 2020 – a period of five months – due to efforts by the now Opposition parties, A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) Coalition to remain in Government.
Litigations, missing Statements of Poll (SOPs) and missing documents from some ballot boxes were among strategies used to derail the declaration of the People’s Progressive Party/ Civic (PPP/C) as the new Government.
In this regard, the manual will also outline documents to be included in the ballot boxes for submission to the offices of the District Returning Offices.
“In this manual you will see long before the elections, you will see which document have to go into the box and which doesn’t so if the Presiding Officer does not want to put a document into the box, he is [committing] an offence, so you don’t have room for people calling up last minute and create confusion,” Jagdeo explained.
Currently, several former employees of GECOM including the former chief elections officer are before the courts on matters relating to electoral fraud.
Since the last elections, some key electoral reform legislations have been addressed to avoid a recurrence.
In 2022, the National Assembly passed the Representation of the People (Amendment) Act for the adoption of clear written procedures for the transmission and tabulation of election results, and for the mandatory publication of detailed polling station results and digital copies of all Statements of Poll (SOPs) which will be posted on GECOM’s website.
This, the Vice President said, will ensure transparency. “On the night of the election or the next morning, long before GECOM finishes the tabulation, every citizen should have a copy of every Statement of Poll and they can do their own additions and know who won the elections because it is by law now,” he highlighted on Thursday.
“We went through all of the things where there can be room for ambiguity or capricious action on the part of the CEO or other staff at GECOM and we clarified them so that they are clear to everyone and put in offences for not doing what they should do,” he added.
Recently, the Government, Opposition parties and other stakeholders met with the Carter Center’s pre-assessment team along with other Elections Observer mission who have been invited to be a part of the next elections process.
In December 2018, when the no-confidence motion was passed in the National Assembly against the David Granger-led Coalition Administration, Hughes had sparked a contentious debate that was exacerbated by legal and procedural challenges that had significantly delayed the country’s electoral process. Central to this debate was Hughes’ argument that, mathematically, one half of the House when divided stands at 32.5 members.
“There is no such thing as a half member, so half of the House is 33 members…this is because you have to round up to identify half of the House,” he had said, mere days after the no-confidence motion was passed. Therefore, he posited that 34 is the majority of the 65-member House rather than 33.
The aftermath of the motion as a result of this argument had been marked by legal challenges, appeals, and judicial decisions that extended beyond the constitutionally-mandated three-month deadline. In June 2019, the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) handed down its decision that 33, not 34, was the majority of the 65-member House.
