By Earl Bousquet

TWO elections in three days only happen every blue moon in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), so the results from Guyana’s September 1, 2025, and Jamaica’s September 3, elections have naturally bred much discussion and debate, analysis and arguments, across the regional grouping’s long island-chain and in its South and Central American member-states.
Both elections commanded attention beyond the borders of Latin America and the Caribbean, with Jamaica’s ruling Labour Party (JLP) seeking a rare third term and Guyana’s People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and its Civic alliance (PPP/Civic) seeking a vital second.

Each poll returned the ruling parties, but in circumstances that reflect new changes in elections landscapes at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century — and both offered many lessons for other CARICOM nations approaching national elections possibly in the next year (including Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines).
Guyana’s President Dr Irfaan Ali secured a second term and Jamaica’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness his third, in elections held under different electoral systems — Jamaica under the Westminster ‘First past the post’ system that dominates in most former British colonies and Guyana with its homegrown Proportional Representation (PR) system.
Like most of CARICOM’s 14 member-states, Jamaica’s race to the finish line was between candidates contesting to represent constituencies in parliament, while in Guyana, the parties battled over ten administrative regions spread over 83,000 square-miles (616,000 square-kilometres) in CARICOM’s biggest member-state.

The JLP won in 34 of Jamaica’s 63 constituencies and the PNP won 29 – the latter increasing its parliamentary presence, but falling short of the final glory.
Guyana’s poll, however, was for ten regions, with the PPP/C winning eight and retaining its majority in the National Assembly, while the other two were won by We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) — a three-month-old party that absolutely obliterated the 61-year-old People’s National Congress (PNC) and it’s A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) alliance.
Both elections featured lower turnouts than five years ago (Guyana under 50% and Jamaica at 39%).

But while Jamaica’s victory margin was a very-close call (JLP 50.55% and PNP 49.95%), Guyana’s PPP/C is projected to win by 10.6% this year, bettering-by-far the 0.3% it won by in 2020 (with 50.7% versus 49.3% for the combined opposition).

This year, the PPP/C won 242,498 votes more-than-twice the 109,066 won by WIN, while the APNU won 77,998, according to the declared results from the various districts which were shared by the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM).
The PPP/C won 46,530 more votes than all the opposition parties combined, and now expected to win 55.32% of Guyana’s ballots, versus the combined opposition’s 44.68%.
In Guyana, the PPP/C and WIN each and both are deeply into PNC and APNU’s traditional strongholds, the ruling alliance surprisingly winning Region Four and the WIN equally-surprisingly taking Regions Seven and 10, both previously held by APNU.

The opposition parties also reacted differently to the official results: Jamaica’s PNP accepting it came five-seats-short of the glory in its latest two-party electoral horse-race, while the two major Guyana opposition parties differ on levels of acceptance and rejection.
APNU and WIN were both crying foul days before and after the poll, and before the final results were officially declared, but while APNU is questioning the entire results (and especially its loss of Region Four), WIN is celebrating its parliamentary-lucrative wins in Regions Two and 10.
WIN’s win has sparked as-much regional and national debate as the PNP’s loss, each generating much debate and discussion, but in Guyana’s case including loud and expletive-loaded levels of intense online verbal warfare between rival social media influencers.

A major question in Guyana today is how the US will react to the WIN leader possibly being the next parliamentary Opposition Leader, with US sanctions on his head.
Washington signalled it might be uncomfortable with the sanctioned businessman being elected to lead the nation, but the US Ambassador to Georgetown now says it will only ‘cooperate’ with him on ‘non-financial’ parliamentary matters, while maintaining the sanctions.

Mohammed, his father and their gold-plated family dynasty business (Mohammed’s Enterprise) were sanctioned after the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) – which administers and enforces US trade and economic sanctions — said they’d not declared US$50 million worth of gold exported from Guyana to the USA.
Voters generally praised the smooth voting process, but APNU – the biggest loser — is bitterly complaining about everything from ‘foreigners voting’ to allegedly-irregular Statements of Poll and Voters’ lists containing ‘names of dead persons.’

But Guyana’s constitution allows ‘any Commonwealth citizen’ living there for over one year to vote in elections – including CARICOM nationals — and the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has explained that ‘dead persons’ names cannot be officially extracted except on submission by objectors of official death certificates.
APNU and WIN, supported by other small parties decimated by the results, have been suggestiAugustic protests — even though it was an APNU administration that was effectively found by the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) to have hijacked the government for five months (March to August, 2020), in the process visibly delaying the tabulation processes in Region Four after having lost the presidential and regional elections.

Another pointing lesson from both elections has to do with timing and content of manifestos: Guyana’s parties released theirs early enough, but the PNP released its own just days before the Jamaica poll.

Yet, even without a manifesto or public policy document on its policies and plans for governance, the WIN outfit attracted over 30% more than the APNU – and took two regions from it.
The roles of international election observer groups are also under discussion and scrutiny, some using European and American yardsticks to question the natural advantages of ruling parties everywhere being able to initiate national projects that will attract public support.
But, all-in-all, the two polls earlier this week each have lessons for all Caribbean political observers, bar-none.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.