(De Ware Tijd) “We have declined in seats and that is of course not nice. But we have had a difficult reign with a financial crisis on top of it. Things just happen.”
This was Parliamentary Speaker Jennifer Geerlings-Simons’s first reaction to the defeat suffered by her party, incumbent Desi Bouterse’s NDP, at the May 25 elections.
According to the preliminary results, the party falls from 26 to sixteen seats. As the maps are now, the NDP will have to sit in opposition banks for the next five years, as predicted by the polling institute Idos.
Geerlings-Simons, also vice-chairman of the NDP and nominated for number two in the constituency of Paramaribo, does not use the term loss himself. She does not want to say whether the result is a punishment of the voter. “After all the votes have been counted and officially adopted, we will calmly evaluate the result,” she said to De Ware Tijd.
According to the preliminary results, the VHP of Chan Santokhi has obtained twenty seats, Abop seven, NPS four and Pertjajah Luhur and BEP two each. Although the distribution of elected resort council candidates has yet to take place, Idos predicts that the joint opposition will count on more than 600 seats, including district councils. An absolute majority.
All opposition parties had repeatedly indicated that they would not cooperate with the NDP in the run-up to the elections. This makes government participation in the period 2020-2025 very unlikely for the Purple Party.
In the past ten years, the opposition has criticized the NDP’s government policy in particular. This was mainly characterized by huge government spending, reduced state revenues and sky-high debt. However, criticism has been dismissed by the government, backed by a majority of 26 MPs.
