GUYANA | Village Voice Editorial | Let’s Call It What It Is: The 2025 Elections Were Rigged!

The following is an Editorial from the Village Voice online publication out of Guyana, published with their courtesy.

GEORGETOWN,  Guyana, September 12, 2025 - Any reasonable, thinking person — regardless of political affiliation — who takes an honest look at the 2025 general elections in Guyana cannot, in good conscience, call them free and fair.

The evidence is overwhelming. From the bloated list of electors to the absence of biometric safeguards, from irregularities at polling stations to the illegal participation of non-citizens, this election was flawed not just at the margins — but at its very core. In local parlance, it was rigged.

We’re not talking about vague accusations or speculative theories. We’re talking about verifiable facts. Foreign nationals were found in possession of Guyanese national identification cards and allowed to vote.

This is a clear violation of Article 59 of the Constitution, which states that only Guyanese citizens or persons domiciled in Guyana are eligible to vote. GECOM allowed it to happen. That alone renders the election null in any democracy governed by law.

But it doesn’t stop there. As the saying goes, elections aren’t only rigged at the count — they can be manipulated at every stage: registration, verification, polling, and declaration. And this 2025 election appears to have been tampered with at multiple points in that chain.

One particularly egregious case involves Region /District 8. Form 24 under the Representation of the People Act, signed and stamped by GECOM’s Returning Officer on September 2, 2025, reported 5,767 valid votes.

But a proper breakdown shows that the actual number is 5,856 — a discrepancy of 89 votes. Some may call that insignificant, but in a democracy, every vote must count and every count must be accurate. Discrepancies like this are red flags — not just about Region 8, but the wider electoral process. If this happened here, where else did it occur?

Guyanese history is full of electoral betrayal — and sadly, the PPP has been central to many of those episodes.

• In 2006, GECOM knowingly handed a Region 10 seat to the PPP that rightfully belonged to the AFC. When challenged, GECOM told the AFC to “take it to court,” effectively admitting wrongdoing but refusing to correct it.
• In 2011, GECOM attempted to falsely declare the PPP the winners of the presidential and parliamentary races. It took the intervention of Opposition-nominated Commissioner Vincent Alexander to stop the fraud. The final result? A parliamentary majority for the Opposition- the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance for Change (AFC)-  the truth nearly buried by a lie.
• The 1997 elections were vitiated by the High Court due to electoral malpractice and voter suppression — a legal term for nullified. That ruling forced Guyana back to the polls in 2001.
• In 2020, deceased persons voted. Non-residents voted. Crucial statutory documents were missing in PPP strongholds — yet GECOM declared the PPP winners anyway. The outcry remains to this day.

Now, in 2025, the same script is playing out — only more brazenly. No credible electoral system can justify allowing foreigners to vote, or proceeding with a bloated voter list, approximately 90 per cent of the population, without biometric voter identification.

No respectable electoral commission would countenance these violations — unless, of course, it was compromised.

And compromised it is. The PPP’s domination of GECOM is no secret. Their influence in staffing, decision-making, and operations has ensured that key positions are occupied by their supporters, ensuring the party not only competes in elections — but referees them too. That is not democracy. That is autocracy by stealth.

Village Voice News’ in-house political analyst, Randy Gopaul, put it plainly:

“If they’ve never run a free and fair election, then they can make no just claim to having ever truly won one.”

He’s right. And his call for a national forensic recount must be taken seriously by any citizen who believes in fair play, democracy, and truth.

This isn’t about partisanship. It’s about preserving the integrity of Guyana’s democracy. It’s about stopping a dangerous descent into one-party rule under the pretense of legitimacy. It’s about confronting a culture of electoral manipulation that is quickly becoming institutionalised.

Yes, some may be temporarily pacified by handouts or token favours. But that’s not governance — that’s bribery. And the long-term consequences of silence today will be a democracy hollowed out tomorrow.

This is not the time for timidity. The people of Guyana deserve elections that are clean, transparent, and constitutionally valid. What we got in 2025 was the opposite: an election that failed the test of fairness at every level.

The outcome may favour the PPP — but the truth favours the people. And the truth is this: The 2025 elections were rigged.

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