Law, not Minister, must break Region 10 Chair deadlock – Manickchand

Local Government and Regional Development Minister, Priya Manickchand has emphasised that she has no authority to break the tie in the Region 10 Chairmanship deadlock, expressing instead that she hopes the matter is resolved in accordance with the law. “Minister no longer has a role to determine who is going to become the chairman if you have a tie. There’s a process and that process has to be engaged,” Manickchand said on Monday during a radio interview with Gordon Moseley. Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice) currently does not have a sworn-in Chairman due to an ongoing political stalemate following the October 2025 Regional Democratic Council (RDC) elections.
The internal RDC election for the Chairperson position, held in October 2025, ended in a 9-9 tie. The candidates were Mark Goring of the We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) party and Dominique Blair of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU). Under Section 20 of the Local Democratic Organs Act, as amended by the Local Authorities (Elections) (Amendment) Act of 2018, if the first vote ends in a tie, the Clerk must immediately put the tied candidates into a second vote. If the second vote also ties, the Clerk must immediately put those same candidates into a third vote. If the third vote still ties, the Clerk must record how each councillor voted.
The law further states that “Having recorded the disposition of each councillor under paragraph (e), the Clerk shall then compute the numeric seat value apportioned to each of the councillors present and voting who were selected on the basis of the Proportional Representation component of the election at which they were duly elected councillors and in addition, assign these results accordingly to the candidate for whom each councillor voted and the Clerk shall then tally the result for each candidate and the candidate securing the greatest number shall immediately be declared by the Clerk to be duly elected as Chairman.”
“For the purpose of the computation under paragraph (f), councillors duly elected as a result of a Proportional Representation list of candidates, shall be deemed to have each received an equal numeric seat value corresponding to the total number of votes received by that list divided by the total number of seats allocated to that list of candidates as declared by the Returning Officer and published by the Elections Commission in the Gazette.” The law also provides for “Where by reason of equality of votes, following the exhaustion of the procedures outlined in paragraphs (a) to (g), no person is elected Chairman, the Clerk, acting in the presence of a designated Magistrate, the councillors present and members of the public, shall by lot choose one of the candidates from the third (final) round of voting and shall declare the candidate chosen to be duly elected as Chairman.”
According to Minister Manickchand, she hopes the legally prescribed process is followed to end the deadlock. “I hope that they do that shortly…there’s a clerk and the clerk would have to be in charge of that process…I have no doubt that Region 10 is going to have their process moved forward and a chair and vice chair would be determined, sometimes it’s far more than you see on the surface, I think the parties there have their own issues going on,” she expressed.
“It was right to remove the role because here you have a politically partisan Minister who is going into a place to tie break, how do you think that’s going to work? It’s not even if the Minister is fair, it’s that it would appear unfair and justice must appear to be fair,” she added. While chairpersons for the other nine administrative regions were sworn in by President Dr Irfaan Ali on November 28, 2025, no representatives from Region 10 were present at the ceremony because the election process remains incomplete. Commenting on the deadlock, President Ali had said, “I am sure that within the ambit of the Constitution and within the ambit of the rules of any elections that the chair and vice chair of Region 10 will be sworn in at the appropriate time when they conclude their elections. As you know, that process is still ongoing.” According to the Official Gazette, following the 2025 General and Regional Elections, the distribution of seats in Region 10 is as follows: WIN – 9 seats, APNU – 5 seats, People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) – 3 seats, and Forward Guyana Movement (FGM) – 1 seat. Region 10 has historically been an APNU stronghold; however, WIN’s performance in the 2025 elections has altered the political dynamics of that district. Currently, the councillors are Dominique Blair, Suzette Gordon, Donna Perry, Faye Rodrigues, Orlon Rogers for APNU; Denzel Chapman, Tamicka Duke, Nandy Miriam Fiedtkou, Mark Goring, Michelle Hope, Leola Narine, Yoland Nedd, Judith Wade-Martin, Hubert Williams for WIN; Odessa Adams, Sarah Gibson, Nikita Roberts for the PPP/C; and Shondell Jerrick for FGM.