Caribbean voters frowning on major parties

By *Jomo Sanga Thomas

(“Plain Talk” Sept. 5, 2025)

Voters in Trinidad, Guyana and Jamaica have spoken. Vincentians eagerly await their turn at the polling booths. The only discernible trend thus far is that significant sections of the regional electorate are turning their backs on the political parties and the electoral process. 

Wednesday’s election in Jamaica recorded another victory for the Jamaica Labour Party led by PM Andrew Holness. The 53-year-old Holness will serve a third consecutive term, despite corruption, integrity, and transparency scandals swirling around him in the run-up to the election. 

The electorate, apparently, responded favourably to Holness and the JLP’s argument that there had been a 42% reduction in crime, lower poverty rates, and steady economic growth. While the People’s National Party (PNP) bettered its 2020 performance, its defeat means that it has failed to win the confidence of the Jamaican electorate in four of the last five elections. PNP’s last win came in 2011.

The JLP won 34 constituencies with 50.6% of the votes, while the PNP won 28 seats and garnered 49.4% of the electorate’s approval. While the PNP won 14 more seats than it did in 2020, it was not enough to prevent the JLP from securing a historic third consecutive term and a 10-to-9 electoral victory, since Jamaicans gained adult suffrage in 1944. 

The vast majority of the Jamaican electorate continues to frown on both political parties. Only 32% of them bothered to cast a ballot. This dismal showing represents a 5.4% fall off from the 2020 elections, where a mere 37.4% of the eligible voters went to the polls.

In Trinidad and Tobago, Kamla Persad Bissessar led her United National Congress to a 26-to-14-seat majority in parliament, but only 54% of the electorate bothered to cast their votes. The 2025 vote count represents a 4% decline compared to those who voted in 2020. Crime and a stagnant economy were key issues in the Trinidad elections. PNM’s failure to instil confidence resulted in more than 100,000 persons who voted for it in 2020 turning their back on it in 2025. UNC’s vote count increased by a mere 50,000, but was enough for Ms Persad Bissessar to return as prime minister.

In the Sept. 1 Guyana elections, the electorate appeared to have had enough of the PNC of former PM Forbes Burnham. Burmham dominated the Guyana political scene from the mid-1960s to the 1980s. The PNC and its offshoot failed to register a victory in any of the 10 electoral regions. 

Filling the breach is the We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) party led by the billionaire financier Asrudin Mohamed. Mohamed’s Nationhood party won the region 10 electoral district and nationwide captured over 109,066 votes. Mohamed’s party, founded less than six months ago, is now the most significant opposition force in Guyana. WIN holds 16 seats when the national assembly sits for the new term. Some observers described the WIN party performance as a “tectonic political shift”. WIN’s performance put paid to the notion that third parties cannot emerge and succeed in the Caribbean political climate.

The previous opposition, A Partnership for National Unity, came in third in the polling and will take 12 seats in the national assembly.

The PPP/Civic coalition, led by President Irfan Ali, returned to power for a second term. Preliminary results indicated that President Ali’s party won twice as many votes as any other party, thus claiming victory in 8 of the 10 regions across the country. The party won 242,498 votes, or 55% of the total. It will occupy 36 of 65 seats in the parliament. 

With 438,467 of the eligible 718,714 casting a vote in the 2025 election, it means that the turnout fell way below the 72% of the people who voted in the 2020 election. 

Economic performance was a big issue in the Guyana elections. However, since oil was discovered there in 2019, only US$10 billion has been generated for national economic projects, which appear to benefit the governing PPP/Civic coalition. The American oil giant ExxonMobil has pocketed much more than the Guyanese whose oil it exploits.  In 2023 alone, ExxonMobil admitted to generating US$613 billion in profits from Guyana.

The downward trend in democratic participation should be of grave concern not only to the political parties but to everyone concerned about democratic governance. What kind of democracy do we really have when 32% of the electorate chooses to vote in national elections? 

Clearly, the parties, civil society organisations and the entire intellectual superstructure need to examine and find solutions to the failure of the parties to enthuse the populace. What are the causes of the malaise? Have people concluded that regardless of who is in power, the basic everyday needs will remain unmet? Are the parties only committed to feathering their own nest at the expense of an electorate whose support and vote they have taken for granted? What can be done to ensure broader popular participation in our electoral process? 

Maurice Bishop, the late former revolutionary prime minister of Grenada, warned against two-minute democracy, where citizens are accorded a few minutes to vote with no further participation in any given five-year term. Whatever the reason for the rapid decline in voter participation across the region, urgent attention must be paid to stopping the slide. Our electoral democracy becomes increasingly meaningless if political parties cannot convince citizens to go to the polls and vote.  

*Jomo Sanga Thomas is a lawyer, journalist, social commentator and a former Speaker of the House of Assembly in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

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