No joinder lists submitted for 2025 elections – INews Guyana
Despite some political parties previously expressing their willingness to form a joinder list for the upcoming September 1 General and Regional Elections (GRE), they have 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 Ward on Tuesday confirmed that GECOM had received no joinder list submissions by the deadline.
Six parties have been approved to contest the upcoming GRE: the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC), 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 Nigel Hughes; We Invest in Nationhood (WIN), led by US-sanctioned businessman, Azruddin Mohammed; Forward Guyana Movement (FGM) with presidential candidate Amanza Walton-Desir, a former APNU parliamentarian; and Assembly of Liberty and Prosperity (ALP) created by former APNU+AFC Minister, Simona Broomes.
Both the AFC and WIN party had publicly noted that they were in negotiations with other parties, looking into the possibility of a joinder 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.
Parties may have been dissuaded from finding amicable terms for a successful joinder list after 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), with Dr Asha Kissoon sitting in the National Assembly in a seat she occupied beyond a six-month term allotted to her party under the Joinder Agreement.
Under a 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; 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 PPP currently holds a one-seat majority in the National Assembly and hopes to secure an even larger majority at the polls this year.
