The Guyana Elections Commission Hasn’t Met In A Year

By NAN Staff Writer, NewsAmericas Now

News Americas, GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Weds. August 12, 2026: The Guyana Elections Commission has not held a single meeting since last September’s general elections, and when it does eventually reconvene, its composition still won’t reflect who Guyanese voters actually elected to Parliament.

WIN, the party led by Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed, holds 16 seats in the National Assembly following the 2025 elections, the largest opposition bloc by a wide margin. It holds zero seats on GECOM. APNU, which won 12 National Assembly seats, less than WIN, holds three GECOM seats. The mismatch stems from GECOM’s structure, which allocates opposition-nominated commissioners based on party configurations that predate the 2025 vote and have never been updated to reflect it.

The Carter Center’s warning

FLASHBACK – Supporters of Guyana’s presidential candidate Azruddin Mohamed from the WIN party take part in a campaign rally in Georgetown on August 30, 2025. Guyana will hold presidential elections on September 1, 2025. (Photo by Joaquin Sarmiento / AFP) (Photo by JOAQUIN SARMIENTO/AFP via Getty Images)

The Carter Center, the U.S.-based election monitoring organization that has observed more Guyanese elections than any other country, issued a formal statement this week calling the impasse a matter of “considerable concern.” Following stakeholder meetings held in Georgetown in June, where the organization’s delegation met with President Irfaan Ali, Opposition Leader Mohamed, GECOM, and a broad range of civil society and political stakeholders, the Center warned that without a fully functioning commission, GECOM will be unable to organize local government elections by this year’s statutory deadline, and will run out of time to implement reforms before Guyana’s next general election.

“The Carter Center notes with considerable concern the current impasse surrounding the composition of the Guyana Elections Commission,” the organization said, calling on officials to amend the 2022 Constitutional Reform Act to reflect the country’s current parliamentary makeup. The Center noted it welcomed Attorney General Anil Nandlall’s earlier acknowledgment, made in May, that the Act requires updating, but the amendment still hasn’t happened.

Nandlall has previously said the government is committed to implementing most of the Carter Center’s recommendations, but cautioned the process would proceed “in stages,” particularly where constitutional amendments are required. Opposition Leader Mohamed has separately called on GECOM’s current opposition-nominated commissioners, appointed under a previous Opposition Leader before WIN’s 2025 breakthrough, to resign.

A pattern of institutions under strain

The GECOM standoff lands in the same stretch of weeks Guyana’s Commission of Inquiry into the MV Barima disaster has faced protests over alleged conflicts of interest among its members, and just days after revelations that the Caribbean Court of Justice’s own president stands accused by a majority of his fellow judges of attempting to influence the ruling in Mohamed’s own extradition case. Three separate Guyanese and regional institutions, an elections body, a disaster inquiry, and the region’s highest court, are now facing public questions about whether they can be trusted to function independently, all within the same month.

For a country navigating record oil wealth, a rebuilt international profile, and a fast-approaching local government election deadline it may not be able to meet, the Carter Center’s warning is a reminder that institutional credibility, once eroded on multiple fronts at once, becomes far harder to rebuild than any single crisis alone.

NewsAmericasNow will continue tracking GECOM’s status and Guyana’s electoral reform process.

RELATED: A Sitting CCJ Judge Says The Court’s President Tried To Influence The Ruling Against Guyana’s Opposition Leader.