Pres. Ali blasts Norton’s “absolutely ridiculous” attempt to stall final results declaration

Still in disbelief over his party’s crushing defeat at Monday’s General and Regional Elections, Leader of the APNU Aubrey Norton has written GECOM asking for a forensic audit and/or the aborting of the 2025 electoral process.

“APNU requests that you intervene immediately to direct the Commission not to declare the election results before the completion of a forensic audit of electoral data, including electors’ votes and/or order that fresh elections are now due, in light of the circumstances,” reads Norton’s September 4, 2025 letter addressed to GECOM’s Chair Justice Retired Claudette Singh.

Asked to comment on this development on Friday, President Dr Irfaan Ali – who has been re-elected to serve a second term – labelled the move as “absolutely ridiculous”.

“This is a cycle: a cycle of people who don’t have this country’s interest at heart, a cycle of people who care nothing about development, a cycle of people who are concerned about power,” he expressed.

The APNU – which comprises largely of the Peoples National Congress (PNC) – had requested a recount of a part of Regions Four and Five. That process is currently ongoing at GECOM’s headquarters.

But so far, the recount has produced no significant changes to the results of polls.

Ali’s party – the Peoples Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) – secured a landslide victory with 242,498 votes, based on the results declared by the returning officers for each of the voting districts.

This represents an impressive lead of over 100,000 votes over the party’s nearest political rival, the We Invest in Nationhood (WIN), which received 109,066 votes. The APNU only managed 77,998 votes.

President Ali asserted that the APNU is just playing games with the country. “It’s all nonsense, absolutely ridiculous…you lose the elections, you ask for a recount, the recount shows that you still lost the elections, and now what do you do?”

He contended that the APNU and its leaders are just “playing games with the country, peoples lives and the electoral process”.

Highlighting that all of the international and local observers have reported that the electoral process was free and fair, President Ali asked “so, what is the issue?”

Norton’s party suffered a monumental defeat at the polls, which has caused it to plummet to the third ranked political force in the country, with significantly lesser seats in the parliament.

The PNC, which is the largest political grouping in the APNU, was formed in 1957 by Forbes Burnham, who was later elected leader – a position he would retain until his death in 1985. It later rebranded itself as PNC/Reform and then again as the APNU after coalescing with  smaller political parties.

Since its inception, the party (under the umbrella of APNU) has since been a strong political force – forming the government as recent as the 2015-2020 period, in a coalition with the Alliance For Change (AFC).

In the last parliament, the APNU and AFC occupied 31 seats in the National Assembly, forming the main parliamentary opposition. Of these, the AFC itself occupied 9 of those seats, while the remaining 22 were held by APNU politicians.

But based on the results of Monday’s General and Regional Elections, the APNU’s influence in the next parliament would weaken.

The main parliamentary opposition will now comprise the WIN party headed by US-sanctioned businessman Azruddin Mohamed.