No joinder lists submitted for 2025 elections – GECOM

Despite some political parties expressing their willingness to form a joinder list for the upcoming September 1 General and Regional Elections (GRE), the parties failed to reach a consensus, with no joinder list being submitted to the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) by Monday night’s deadline.
GECOM Public Relations Officer, Yolanda Warde, on Tuesday confirmed that GECOM had received no joinder list submissions by the deadline.
Six parties have currently been approved to contest the upcoming GRE: the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), led by presidential candidate Dr Irfaan Ali; the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), led by Aubrey Norton; the Alliance for Change (AFC), led by presidential candidate Attorney Nigel Hughes; the Forward Guyana Movement (FGM), with presidential candidate Amanza Walton-Desir; We Invest in Nationhood (WIN), led by US-sanctioned Azruddin Mohammed; and the Assembly of Liberty and Prosperity (ALP), created by former APNU Minister Simona Broomes.
Both the AFC and WIN parties had publicly noted that they were in negotiations with other parties looking into the possibility of a joint list, while the PPP, APNU and FGM were not considering a list.
Under Guyana’s proportional representation (PR) electoral system, a joinder list is when two or more parties agree in advance of the election to pool their votes together for the purpose of seat allocation after the election. The parties remain independent during the campaign, and voters vote for each party separately, but when seats in the National Assembly are calculated, their votes are combined as one.
GECOM earlier this month clarified that under the legal procedures governing the Joinder of Lists and the Filling of Vacancies in the National Assembly, if only one seat is won by the combination, then that seat is awarded to the party with the highest number of valid votes (Single Seat Scenario).
GECOM issued a statement clarifying the parameters of parliamentary seat sharing under a joinder list following the controversy that arose from the 2020 election joinder list between The New Movement (TNM), the Liberty and Justice Party (LJP) and the A New and United Guyana (ANUG), when Dr Asha Kissoon was sitting in the National Assembly in a seat she occupied beyond a six-month term allotted to her party under the Joinder Agreement.
Under the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) of the Joinder List, signed by the three parties, they would rotate occupation of the single seat that was won on a rotational basis proportionate to the votes each had earned. Under the agreement, the stipulated duration of the terms for each party was two years, six months and 20 days for the LJP; two years, five months for ANUG; and 91 days for TNM.
However, when her timeline had ended in November 2023, Dr Kissoon continued to occupy the parliamentary seat in a move that had sparked criticisms.
However, addressing the procedures for filling parliamentary vacancies, GECOM cited Section 99A of ROPA, stating that if a seat becomes vacant outside of a general dissolution of Parliament, the replacement must be someone who is not currently an elected Member of Parliament, be qualified and willing to serve, and be selected from the same list from which the original MP was elected.
As such, only members from the same party can continue to successively occupy the parliamentary seat if it becomes vacant.
The APNU and AFC had previously joined forces to contest the 2015 elections as a coalition and won that election by a slim margin; their party joined together again to contest the 2020 elections but with reduced concessions to the AFC. Over the years, the AFC has been experiencing declining electoral value during poor showings in the local government elections in 2018 and 2023.
During negotiations to renew their coalition for the upcoming elections, the AFC had demanded the presidential candidacy for their leader, Nigel Hughes, while also demanding a 40-60 split of government positions in APNU’s favour and the condition that the presidential candidate’s party should not hold the Leader of the List position, which controls parliamentary appointments and removal. However, this was rejected by APNU. The talks eventually broke down.