Attorney General: Constitutional Reform Consultations to Begin
By |Antonio Dey | HGP Nightly News|
GEORGETOWN, GUYANA — Attorney General Anil Nandlall has said the Government of Guyana is committed to implementing most of the Carter Center’s recommendations on Guyana’s electoral system, but has cautioned that the process must proceed in stages — particularly where constitutional amendments are required.
Speaking on his weekly Issues in the News programme on May 21, 2026, Nandlall described the Carter Center’s final report on Guyana’s 2025 General and Regional Elections as a well-crafted document that raises important issues about the country’s electoral framework.
Government’s Position: Progress, Not Rejection
The Attorney General directly addressed suggestions that the Government has ignored previous electoral reform recommendations, rejecting that characterisation and arguing that some reforms are already in place while others are more complex.
“As we stated, we are committed to implementing most of these recommendations — but they have to be done in stages,” Nandlall said.
He focused on the Carter Center’s positive assessment of the 2025 election-day procedures and tabulation process, arguing that those findings confirm the value of reforms introduced following the disputed 2020 elections — reforms that the Carter Center’s report acknowledged contributed to a more efficient and transparent counting process.[CARTER CENTER’S REPORT SAYS SOME ELIGIBLE VOTERS WERE DISENFRANCHISED DURING GUYANA’S 2025 POLLS. https://youtu.be/Car-1U-S6HE]
Constitutional Reform Consultations Coming
Nandlall revealed a specific near-term development: the Constitutional Reform Commission was scheduled to meet to finalise planning for a public outreach programme through which consultations will be conducted across Guyana.
“Tomorrow afternoon there is a scheduled meeting to take place, and one of the things that we are concluding discussions on in that commission is the planning of an outreach programme through which we will begin public consultations across the length and breadth of Guyana,” he said.
The public consultation process will be a significant step in the Constitutional Reform Commission’s work — allowing citizens, civil society organisations, and political parties to formally engage with the reform agenda before any legislative or constitutional changes are drafted.
A Timeline Commitment
The AG made a specific commitment on the reform timeline, tied to the next election cycle.
“By the time the next elections cycle comes around, we would have accomplished most of the tasks which we have set ourselves,” Nandlall said.
The commitment is qualified — the AG said “most,” not all, of the tasks. The unresolved issues identified by the Carter Center include campaign finance regulation, the accuracy of the voters list, the politically divided composition of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), and the need to strengthen public trust in electoral institutions. These are substantive structural questions that the AG’s timeline commitment will be measured against.
The Unresolved Issues
The Carter Center’s report identified several issues that remain to be addressed. Among them:
Campaign finance — the regulation of how political parties and candidates raise and spend money during election campaigns, which the Carter Center identified as an area requiring attention.
The voters list — concerns about the accuracy and completeness of the list of eligible voters, which connects directly to the Carter Center’s equal-access findings, including unregistered Amerindian citizens. [DESK: link to HGP’s earlier reporting on the equal-access findings.]
GECOM’s composition — the Guyana Elections Commission is currently composed of commissioners nominated by the President and the parliamentary opposition, a structure that has long attracted criticism as a potential impediment to genuinely non-partisan election administration. Reforming this structure would likely require constitutional amendment.
Public trust — the Carter Center noted that rebuilding public confidence in electoral institutions, damaged by the contested 2020 elections, remains a work in progress.
Reform as a Process
Nandlall characterised electoral reform not as a single event but as an ongoing process, and said the Government is not rejecting any of the Carter Center’s recommendations but is implementing them in accordance with their legal and constitutional requirements.
The Carter Center’s report, covering Guyana’s 2025 General and Regional Elections, has welcomed the improvements made since 2020 while identifying these remaining areas of work. HGP Nightly News has reported on the report’s findings across three separate stories this week, covering the tabulation improvements, the equal-access gaps affecting prisoners, persons with disabilities, Amerindian communities, and the LGBTI community, and now the Government’s formal response to the report.
