Following last Monday’s local government elections, the opposition People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) now controls more Local Authority Areas (LAAs) and it picked up over twice the number of Proportional Representation (PR) seats as its main competitor A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), according to preliminary results released by the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) on Friday.

Unlike in 2016, GECOM has not released the number of votes cast in each LAA but an analysis of the number of seats earned under the PR component of the election shows that the PPP/C won more than twice the number of seats as the APNU.

The elections were held under a hybrid system First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) and PR system, with each voter allowed to vote twice: once under the FPTP component and once under the PR component. Each system accounts for 50% of the seats available in each local government area. Of the 596 PR seats available countrywide, the PPP/C won 386 or 64.76% compared to the 188 or 31.5% won by APNU. The Alliance For Change (AFC) managed to win 14 seats, while four different Voluntary Groups won a combined total of eight PR seats…..