Commonwealth citizens have a right to vote in elections in Guyana

Sep 30, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News – One of the lesser-known but fascinating aspects of Guyana’s electoral law is the right of Commonwealth citizens to vote in national elections. Unlike in many other countries, Guyana’s Constitution extends the franchise beyond its own citizens to include those from other Commonwealth territories.

But there are conditions attached: Commonwealth citizens must be both resident and domiciled in Guyana. Of recent, this provision has been the subject of debate, particularly over the meaning and enforceability of the word domicile.

The origins of this provision lie in Guyana’s history as part of the British Commonwealth. When the country became independent in 1966, the framers of the country’s Constitution sought to maintain a level of political and cultural fraternity with other Commonwealth countries. As a result, Commonwealth citizens legally resident and domiciled in Guyana were granted the right to vote.

Importantly, successive governments, including under Forbes Burnham or Desmond Hoyte, never repealed or revised this clause. Despite extensive constitutional reforms after 1978 and following the 1997 elections, the requirements that Commonwealth citizens be domiciled and resident in Guyana remained untouched.

To better understand the debate, it is necessary to distinguish between residency and domicile. Residency is a matter of fact. It refers to the place where a person actually lives at a given time. A Commonwealth citizen working, studying, or otherwise physically present in Guyana can easily prove residency with an address, a utility bill, or other evidence. Residency does not require permanence; it only requires presence.

Domicile, by contrast, is more complicated. It is not simply about where you live, but where you intend to make your permanent home. Courts across the Commonwealth have long treated domicile as a combination of fact and intention. One can be resident in many countries over a lifetime but have only one true domicile at a time.

This is where the constitutional requirement becomes problematic. Domicile is, in many ways, a mental state—what lawyers call “of the mind.” It reflects intention, and intention is something no government or official can truly read.

Courts across the Commonwealth have repeatedly stressed the subjective and elusive nature of domicile. For example, in the English case of Udny v Udny (1869), one judge observed that every person has a domicile of origin (usually the domicile of their father at birth) and may later acquire a domicile of choice (by living elsewhere with the intention of making that place their permanent home). The rule is that your domicile of origin never disappears entirely; it only becomes dormant when you acquire a new domicile of choice. If you abandon your chosen domicile, the domicile of origin springs back into effect — unless and until you establish another domicile of choice.

In Winans v Attorney General (1904), the UK courts emphasized that domicile is ultimately a matter of intention. In the case of Grove Vaucher vs The Solicitor to the Treasury (1889), it was held that “the domicile of a person is constituted by the factum of residence in a country and the animus manendi that is the intention to reside in a country for an indefinite period of time. Therefore, in order to determine an intention of the person at any particular time, you may not only give regard to conduct and acts before and at that time, but also the acts and conduct after the relevant time, which are relative and have proper weight of cogency”.

The reasoning of the courts in these and other cases affirm the position that courts cannot read minds, but they can infer intention from objective acts. And I contend that the mere act of applying for a national identification card can be considered as evidence of an intention to be domiciled.

While the application process for a National ID in Guyana does not explicitly ask an applicant to swear loyalty or declare an intention to stay permanently, the very act of applying for and obtaining a National ID card is a formal acknowledgment of ties to the country. It represents a willingness to participate in national systems, from voting to accessing public services. It is not something a transient visitor would do. In this sense, applying for a National ID is evidence consistent with an intention to remain, and therefore with domicile.

Put differently, if domicile is an elusive state of mind, then applying for a National ID provides a tangible action that aligns with that mental intention. It bridges the gap between residency (physical presence) and domicile (permanent intention).

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Commonwealth citizens’, electoral law, GECOM, Guyana’s Constitution, Peeping Tom, Vote

One thought on “Commonwealth citizens have a right to vote in elections in Guyana”

habeeb September 30, 2025 at 3:19 pm

That was evident when Burnham had all his votes from England, where
many homes were vacant, false addresses, non existent voters who “voted”
for the PNC and him.

Comments are closed.

Latest News