Guyana’s Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Mohabir Anil Nandlall, S.C., has firmly rejected recent calls from opposition-nominated commissioners at the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to allow prisoners to vote in the upcoming September 1, 2025 general and regional elections. He described the proposal as a “last-ditch attempt to disrupt the electoral process.”
While there is no law explicitly barring prisoners from voting, Nandlall pointed out that “no legal framework currently exists to facilitate voting by persons who are either serving sentences or are on remand.”
Speaking on his weekly programme Issues in the News on Tuesday evening, the Attorney General questioned the timing and motives behind the opposition’s push, especially coming just three months before the polls.
“From 1964 to 1992, didn’t they know that prisoners were not voting? And even before that, in 1957, they didn’t know that prisoners were not voting in Guyana since elections started in Guyana in 1953? These are gentlemen who are in their seventies; they’re not spring chickens. They don’t know that prisoners have not voted before?” Nandlall said.
He emphasised that the People’s National Congress Reform (PNC/R), a major political party, had never raised the issue of prisoners voting during its more than seventy years in Guyana’s political landscape.
“They never championed the cause of prisoners voting during all those years. There has not been any change in the law since. How is it, all of a sudden, three months before elections, this is an issue of some contention?” the Attorney General questioned.
Nandlall further explained that Guyana’s voting system derives from British colonial traditions, noting: “Historically, in the Commonwealth… prisoners generally did not vote in England for hundreds of years. And that system was passed down. That tradition and that convention was passed down.”
He added that since imprisonment involves the loss of several freedoms, voting may historically have been one of them by default. To allow prisoners to vote, the government would need to make a clear policy decision, pass new laws, and undertake substantial administrative preparations.
“You have to have the legislative framework… and then you will have to have the logistics and many, many logistics to think [through],” Nandlall said.
He sharply criticised the opposition-nominated GECOM commissioners for raising the issue at this stage, accusing them of using the debate as a tactic to delay elections.
“That is how you know that these guys can’t be genuine. They are not genuine when they purport to speak as though they are Democrats… You know that it is hypocritical. You know that it is duplicitous…The only ulterior motive would have been to frustrate and delay the elections, and they have lost abysmally,” he said.
The Attorney General’s position is supported by People’s Progressive Party (PPP)-nominated Commissioner Sase Gunraj, who also noted that there is no legislation enabling GECOM to allow prisoners to vote and questioned the timing of the opposition’s push.
Gunraj revealed that GECOM has already voted on the matter, confirming that prisoners will not be allowed to vote in the September 1, 2025 elections.
