GECOM’s decision to change requirements form, irresponsible: Mahipaul
Jun 15, 2025
Executive Member of the PNCR Ganesh Mahipaul
Kaieteur News – Executive Member of the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) Ganesh Mahipaul on Friday described the Guyana Elections Commission’s (GECOM) decision to change Nomination Form on short notice as “irresponsible”.
GECOM has announced that Nomination Day will be July 14, 2025. The declaration followed President Irfaan Ali’s disclosure that General and Regional Elections will be held on September 1, 2025.
Mahipaul told reporters on Friday at the party’s weekly press conference that the recent changes made by the Commission for the upcoming elections are well noted.
Mahipaul argued that because the elections season is already in motion, political parties have already used the old Form 2, which requires signatures to support candidates in the elections.
“What GECOM did yesterday was to change the format and structure of the old form, and this is applicable to the Regional List, the Geographical List, and the Top-Up List. All these lists require a certain amount of signatures from nominators for the candidates to be eligible for participation in the elections. What this change seeks to do is to ensure that there are authentic signatures, and history has shown that it is only the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) that has ever engaged in having fraudulent signatures on their forms in previous elections,” he said.
He reminded that in 2018 during the Local Government Elections “there were signatures of a family, and that family had to come out publicly on social media to say that they never gave consent or their signatures to be on any form. We also remember in 2018, the People’s Progressive Party had to withdraw from participating in Constituency #9 at Maria Johanna, Wakenaam, because of the signatures that were on their forms being fraudulent, and we also remember in 2023 when Bharrat Jagdeo had to apologize to a family because a dead person’s signature was on the form.”
The Member of Parliament (MP) stated that while he understands the intention of the change is to make the forms better, the timing of it poses a problem. Mahipaul said that at the announcement of elections, the old form was still available on GECOM’s website and it was used by parties to begin their work, especially in the remote and far-flung areas, where they needed to gather the signatures to satisfy the requirements.
“This decision, which was taken yesterday, poses a problem in the sense that it will now require political parties to expend additional resources to go and redo work that was already done. And I must point out that the APNU has basically completed its signatures, and the completed work was done on the old form. Now, we have to go and redo the very work that we did just a couple of weeks ago,” he lamented.
Mahipaul stressed that with the new form, additional resources would have to be used by opposition parties to satisfy the new requirements. He accused the government of using the state’s resources to fund their campaign and gather their signatures.
“When we see Priya Manickchand in Region #9, or we see Susan Rodrigues in Region #8, or we see Colin Croal in Region #1, and wherever else you see the other Ministers, they are traveling on State resources paid for by the State (such as accommodation, meals, etc.) and are also engaged in the same exercise which the APNU is engaged in, which is to gather signatures to meet the requirement. We now have to go and redo that,” he added.
The MP called the commission’s decisions irresponsible, saying that it was aware the issue existed for quite some time.
“That will not short-change the APNU Coalition. We will be going out again, and we will be getting our signatures as we have gotten them before, and we will be ready for these elections to meet the timelines, and we will defeat the People’s Progressive Party come September 1st, 2025,” he assured.
On Thursday, in a statement to the media, GECOM said that it has approved the use of a modified version of the Nomination Form which is required to be submitted along with the List of Candidates Political Parties to contest General and Regional Elections.
“The modified version of the Form was proposed by Chief Election Officer (CEO), Mr. Vishnu Persaud to cater for greater accuracy and to guard against misuse. Nomination Forms are used to record the particulars of the Nominators submitting the Lists of Candidates for (i) the National Top-up List of Candidates, (ii) the Geographic Constituency List of Candidates, and (iii) the Regional Democratic Council List of Candidates,” GECOM said.
GECOM said the proposal was premised on the fact that there were a number of cases during the period subsequent to Nomination Day in 2023 for the Local Government Elections, where persons claimed they either did not sign as nominators or they were not aware that they had signed as nominators. The matter generated a great deal of controversy in the public domain and affected timely processing of Lists of Candidates.
Taking this development into consideration, GECOM said it is taking the opportunity to notify all potential contestants to use the new version of the form to document the particulars and signatures of their Nominators for their respective Lists of Candidates.
Further, the Commission said that it is of utmost importance to the avoidance of doubt and to ensure timely processing of the Lists of Candidates within the short window of time that is statutorily available for the examination and correction of Lists of Candidates.
“Specifically, the modified version of the Nomination Form carries the following text at the top of every page: “We the undersigned knowingly and willingly provide our particulars and append our signatures as Nominators for the National Top-up/Geographic Constituency/Regional Democratic List of Candidates for the ………………………………………………….. Party”,” the commission added.
Parties can access the updated forms on GECOM’s website in the General and Regional Elections 2025 resource hub at https://www.gecom.org.gy/public/home/resource_hub. Alternatively, hardcopies can be uplifted from the Office of the Chief Election Officer or from the Office of the Public Relations Officer.
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