General Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), Bharrat Jagdeo, has stated that the only threat to the conduct of free and fair elections in Guyana is from the People’s National Congress/Reform (PNCR).
“If there is ever a threat to holding free and fair elections at GECOM from anyone, it would be the PNC cabal… In the five months [after the 2020 elections], that cabal sought to support the rigging, and that cabal is already seeking to undermine the preparations for the [2025] elections. They will not succeed,” Jagdeo stated at a press conference on Thursday.
He was at the time responding to recent statements made by opposition-aligned Commissioner at the Guyana Elections Commission, Vincent Alexander, who expressed concerns about GECOM’s capacity to hold free and fair elections.
In a letter to the editor on Friday, Alexander complained about the lack of urgency by the Elections Commission to deal with certain matters ahead of the September 1, 2025, General and Regional Elections.
In fact, he noted that “GECOM never mentions free, fair and transparent elections in its mantra of readiness.”
Objections to Guyanese registration
Moreover, the PPP General Secretary went on to call out the Opposition Commissioner for objecting to Guyanese nationals from remote Amerindian villages being registered to vote at the upcoming elections.
Alexander recently raised concerns about laws that allow Toshaos to vouch for persons born in indigenous villages so that they can obtain a Guyanese birth certificate, which then allows them to register to vote.
According to Alexander, this has created an opportunity for foreign nationals to take advantage of this system.
But Jagdeo explained that these are Guyanese nationals from remote indigenous communities who lived here all their lives but were never registered to get their birth certificates – an issue that has been ongoing for decades.
“When a child is born in some of these villages, the child doesn’t get registered… They’re living all their lives in Guyana – some of them are even working for the Government – and they don’t have a birth certificate. They don’t have any document to show. They were born in our country and lived their whole lives here, but because their mother or father couldn’t register them in a village, say Baramita or somewhere else … they are our people, not people coming from Venezuela; he’s opposed to them getting their birth certificates,” the PPP General Secretary lamented.
According to Jagdeo, who also serves as the country’s vice president, these are small numbers of Amerindian Guyanese.
For example, the figures for the outlying regions range from 3000 to 5000 – all registered between the period 2020 and 2025.
Jagdeo said the Opposition would go to any extent of accusing the PPP of wanting to rig the upcoming September 1 elections when they have shown at the contentious 2020 polls that they will stand on the side of unrighteousness and those who tried to subvert the elections.
“They will make every excuse to paint a picture that the PPP/C is trying to rig the elections in the future. We have a tough system. You have to run a gauntlet of checks before you get a ballot [to vote] … Some countries don’t have that…”
“So, I would say ignore all of the noise coming from people like Vincent Alexander. They’ve shown that they would stand on the side of unrighteousness or on the side of people who’ve been trying to subvert the elections,” he posited.
Nevertheless, the PPP General Secretary declared his confidence in the electoral system, further expressing satisfaction with the presence of the United States-based Carter Centre and other observer groups, both local and international, that will be here in Guyana to monitor the September 1 polls.
The international community had played a crucial role in 2020 to thwart attempts to rig those elections.
