Govt to take back lost time due to delayed 2020 election results

Last Updated on Friday, 3 March 2023, 15:47 by Denis Chabrol

GECOM and party representatives opening a container that contained ballot boxes of votes during the recount.

Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo on Friday announced that Guyanese would vote in general elections in late 2025, amounting to a take-back of the five months between the election in March, 2020 and the declaration of the results in August.

Many people believe  that this is really the two-thirds point in the term of the People’s Progressive Party. It is not. As you know elections will be held some time in November- December of 2025 so there is still nearly another three years to go largely because of the extended delay that we had in declaring the results and then the period after convening Parliament,” he said.

Following the declaration,  the National Assembly was convened for the first time on September 1, 2020, Mr Jagdeo explained that there is a three-month period that is added after that date to arrive at the time frame for the next general and regional elections.

He told a news conference that that meant that his People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC)-led administration had another two years in office to implement its policies and programmes. “There is time in the future to implement the aggressive plans that we have laid out to transform this country,” Mr Jagdeo said.

Mr Jagdeo again poured scorn on the opposition coalition of A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) for claiming victory in 2020 but failing to release its copies of the Statements of Poll to prove. “Until today, we have this view that their SOPs will show that they won the elections and they keep saying this around the country0 they won the elections but can’t produce a shred of evidence,” he said.

After several declaration of results for Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica) by the Guyana Elections Commission that would have seen the then governing APNU+AFC being declared the winner , eventually that election management body conducted a national vote recount whose results were used to declare the PPPC victorious.

The Guyana Court of Appeal’s decision is pending on whether the High Court should again hear one of  the two APNU+AFC election petitions. A number of now former senior GECOM officials and members of the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) have been charged with electoral fraud.