The Commonwealth Electoral Observation Mission has published its final report for Guyana’s 2025 Elections.

While the group noted marginal improvements and commended the Elections Commission for the conduct of the elections, it observed that there are some challenges that persist that needs to be addressed.

The report noted that while peaceful and vibrant, the overall campaign environment was characterised by uneven access to resources and media; persistent ethnic and partisan divides; weak regulation of campaign finance and online information and structural imbalance in state-media relations. It found that media pluralism in Guyana remains uneven, with the state-owned Chronicle and National Communications Network (NCN) seen to be favouring the governing party, while private media face financial pressures and sometimes self-censorship due to political intimidation and advertising dependence.

The group has recommended the development of a media code of conduct for election coverage in collaboration with the Guyana Press Association (GPA) and GECOM.

Further, the group also recommended that Guyana should strengthen electoral integrity and fairness, by institutionalizing issue-based campaigning; ensuring media independence and transparency, and build digital resilience through monitoring, regulation, and civic education.

The group also observed the counting, and tabulation processes were peaceful, transparent, and generally well managed.

It said GECOM’s updates to electoral manuals and decentralisation of counting represented major improvements since the previous elections.

The Commonwealth Observer Group noted significant improvements in transparency and accuracy, particularly with the introduction of simultaneous electronic posting of polling station results.

The Commonwealth team found that the 2025 elections reflected a maturing electoral process in Guyana, but noted that for future elections, there should be improved implementation of recommendations proposed in previous elections by observer missions which includes the updating of the Voter’s list and the implementation of biometrics.

The Commonwealth encouraged all political stakeholders to give priority to the establishment of a robust post-electoral domestic mechanism that may, in short order, produce the legislative and constitutional reform needed for the conduct of credible, transparent and inclusive elections in the future.

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