The Guyana Elections Commission has announced that a total of seven political parties have presented their Lists of Candidates to the Commission (GECOM) for the upcoming elections.

There were 21 parties that submitted their political symbols to GECOM a few weeks ago, but only seven made it to nomination day.

Chief Election Officer (CEO), Vishnu Persaud told reporters that today’s process was smoothly executed with every party given an opportunity to have their list submitted for approval.

He said now that the lists are in, the Elections Secretariat will begin the processing of those lists and encoding them. Parties will be contacted on Tuesday with any possible issues on their list and given up to the following day to correct those issues.

“We are now required to process these lists to ensure that they meet the statutory requirements and once they do, they will be approved to contest the elections. If they don’t, they will be given the opportunity to remedy the defects and once those are remedied, they will go forward to be approve to contest the elections,” the Chief Elections Officer explained.

Contesting parties had the option of submitting three separate lists – the Geographical Constituencies Lists, the National Top-up Lists, and the Regional Democratic Council Lists. However, in order to qualify for a seat in the National Assembly, the parties must contest for a minimum of six of the Geographical Constituencies, and are therefore required to submit the Geographical Constituencies List and National Top-up List.

Those lists, however, must comprise the names of registered electors who are eligible to be elected to the National Assembly, and must be signed by not less than 150 nominators and not more than a 175 nominators for each geographical constituency. Failure to meet those requirements could result in a list being disapproved.

“Again, to meet the statutory requirements, if it is a list of nominators that the nominators for that list first of all that they are registered as electors and secondly that they are not on somebody else’s list and that they have not signed for more than one list. Nominators can sign for each list for the same party,” Persaud explained.

Statutorily, the Election Secretariat is expected to complete the processing of the lists submitted, and in accordance with the approved timelines, the seven-member Election Commission led by Justice (Ret’d) Claudette Singh is expected to give then stamp of approval on Friday.

The Chief Election Officer said once the lists have been approved, the Election Secretariat will initiate the process of printing the ballots, statement of polls and other electoral materials ahead of September 1.

“So, we move to the designing of the ballot papers, those are printed overseas, meanwhile we are doing our logistical work in preparations for the elections. Ballots come back, we do extraction for the conduct of Disciplined Services balloting and then we pack our boxes for Election Day, September 1,” he said.

The Disciplined Services will cast their ballots 10 days before September 1. Persaud said the Election Secretariat is satisfied that all systems are in place for the conduct of free and fair elections come September 1. He anticipates that preliminary results for the electoral divisions will be out by night after the election. 

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