No joinder lists submitted as timeline expires  

Despite the option to combine forces formally, no political party submitted a Joinder of Lists to the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) by Monday night’s deadline. This means that all six parties which filed candidate lists last week — APNU, PPP, WIN, AFC, ALP, and Forward Guyana — will officially contest the upcoming elections as separate entities.

This was confirmed by GECOM Commissioner Sase Gunraj in a Facebook post  on Tuesday.

However, while the absence of official joinder lists may suggest a crowded ballot, the reality is that several parties have already stitched together alliances, coalitions and partnerships to boost their electoral prospects.

For instance, businessman Azruddin Mohamed’s We Invest in Nqationhood (WIN) has teamed up with Dr Mark France’s A New and United Guyana (ANUG) to present a united front. Similarly, Forward Guyana, led by Amanza Walton-Desir, has joined hands with Dorwain Bess of V-PAC and Nigel London of The People’s Movement — billing themselves not as competitors but “co-builders” of an alternative vision.

The Alliance For Change (AFC), under Nigel Hughes, is also running as an alliance with Sherwyn Downer’s United Workers Party. Meanwhile, the PNC-led A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) has paired with the Working People’s Alliance to reinforce its base.

Under Guyana’s electoral system, parties that submit their candidate lists separately can still formally combine their lists — a process known as a Joinder of Lists or Combination of Lists. This can only happen after the official lists are approved and published, and it affects how seats are distributed once the votes are counted.

Crucially, a joinder does not change how people vote. Voters still choose their preferred party list on the ballot paper. The joinder comes into play only when GECOM allocates seats in the National Assembly. Parties in a combined list pool their votes to maximise seats won, but seats are then distributed among them according to each party’s individual vote share.

To activate this mechanism, parties must send a written notice to the Chief Election Officer — in this case, by the July 21 deadline — and the agreement must be formally gazetted so the public is aware.

With Monday’s deadline now past, all official combinations are off the table for this election cycle — at least on paper. The alliances now depend on behind-the-scenes partnerships and political cooperation rather than the formal mechanism designed to help smaller or like-minded parties secure a stronger foothold in Parliament.