Elections in Suriname 2020: Turnout, Unofficial Results, Winners and Losers, Fraud Concerns
Yesterday, on May 25th, 2020, the official elections in Suriname, South America took place.
The country's voting system exists of 10 different districts (states) in which different members of political parties are registered, who have lived in the district for at least 2 years. In total, 51 members will be voted into parliament, where 26 out of 51 seats are needed to win the elections, but a two third majority (34/51) is needed to directly elect the president.
The elections had a rocky start yesterday, with several irregularities occurring at certain voting locations, leading to authorities expanding to voting hours with two extra hours (9 PM instead of 7 PM). Those two extra hours let to a lot of midnight counting of the votes, which all still takes place manually by counting each voting ballot independently after verifying wether or not the vote was valid.
Voting lines where a little longer than usual, partly due to the relatively high voting turnout of 72%, both also due to COVID guidelines that were in place. Waiting hours to vote seemed more like the norm than an occasional outlier. While not everyone took all the COVID guidelines into account, the elections went along very peacefully throughout the country.
[ A voting turnout of 72%, which might not be common in the Western world, is very common in Suriname, where voting once every 5 years is still considered a very big deal - Source: Ministry of Internal Affairs, data distributed by CoreStats ]
As all voting stations counted well into the morning, almost a full 24 hours after voting closed, only 75% of the votes have been informally publicized, providing some results to the biggest winners and losers of the elections, based on current results.
The winners:
VHP - 20 seats (+11)
According to the current results, the leading oppositional party going into the elections, the VHP, has won the election by a relatively big margin. While they were already tipped to be the biggest gainers, they've managed to secure a position in which forming a government without them is extremely hard. It took a campaign of close to 5 years to convince the Surinamese population that the where no longer a one-dimensional party (in previous elections, ethnicity has always been a factor in deciding the outcome of the elections), in which they succeeded.
ABOP - 7 seats (+2)
The political party of former Jungle Commando leader Ronny Brunswijk already surprised a lot of critics by growing to 5 seats in parliament in 2015, but hasn't slown down. Expanding with 2 more seats, they seem to be a likely candidate to provide a Vice President if they were to be selected a part of the new government. The ABOP, traditionally a Maroon party, was in a similar position in 2010, in which they provided a non-traditional candidate as Vice President. While slowly but steadily growing to become the third biggest political party in the country, ABOP not only get votes in Brunswijk's birth district of Marowijne, but in four other districts as well.
The established parties
In 2015, it marked the first time in recent history the new political parties didn't manage to get enough votes to earn at least one seat in the National Assemblee (parliament). In 2020, this feat is about to repeat itself, as currently, all the 51 seats will end up going to political parties that have been in this position before. While not all established parties will be happy with the results (some projected themselves much higher in the rankings), they will at least be represented in parliament. Some with more representation than 5 years ago. This includes the NPS, by many considered the original National Party, whose Paramaribo ballot now includes Shanti Venetiaan, a University Faculty member and daughter of three time former President Ronald Venetiaan, who is considered a crowd favorite among many.
The losers:
NDP - 16 (-10)
If the current numbers were to stay the same, the party of current president Desi Bouterse would not only lose the majority vote, but also lose 10 seats, making a run into this years coalition a little less likely. While still being the second biggest party in seats, it is quite a blow to a party that had almost sole control of the country's government and still considered themselves favorites going into this election. With multiple protests and convictions against the government and certain members of the coalition in the past couple of years, the NDP turned towards their party philosophy and accomplishments in past political term. This did not weigh in against the perceived amounts of national debt, corruption scandals, economic decline and inflation that a large part of the population observed.
Turncoats
During the 2015 elections, several turncoats jumped ship and joined the coalition and ended up forming their own political party. While they provided a lot of bravado in propaganda and promotion, if current results were to be final, they would be left completely empty handed. The 2020 elections also hasn't been kind to smaller parties that joined the coalition in 2015 either, leaving two smaller parties who both enjoyed a seat in parliament for the passed 2 elections, but decided to join the NDP-led coalition in 2015, without a seat in the National Assemblee.
Smaller parties
As the cry for change in political leadership grew, different political leaders decided to start their own party, as well as several activists that led the way in protest against the current government. Along with the other existing parties, as of now, 11 of the 17 participating political parties will be without a seat in parliament. While some might have been at least a couple of thousand votes short of a seat, a vote smart campaign against the NDP urging voters to vote for the established parties might just have been the final nail in the coffin. Several of these parties however do still consider these results as a victory, as their main goal was to sent the current Coalition parties home.
Fraud concerns
As the election draws to a close, several parties have shown their concern for vote fraud, in particular by the NDP, as two extra seats in parliament could propel them into a position where the would be able to prevent a new president to be elected through the National Assemblee.
Currently all voting ballots are being held in the National Indoor Stadium, with several observers from different political parties keeping a close eye on both the ballots and each other. District commissioner Nerkust has allowed for people to stay in the stadium, but as Suriname is officially still on lockdown from 11 PM to 5 AM due to COVID, no one in the building is allowed the leave during lockdown hours.
Further prognoses is still being done as several parties had observers at all voting stations when votes were counted by the officials. Especially the VHP has been very thorough, with several members going live on Facebook to give live reports of the vote count at different voting locations, providing video proof to back up their findings.
Aside from those efforts, 57 voting locations in Paramaribo had not handed in their official numbers as of this afternoon, which was promised to be counted before the lockdown goes into effect.
For now, new numbers are finally arriving on different dashboards around the country and with votes from 80% of all voting locations being counted, the results have remained the same.
For the official results, the population of Suriname will have to wait another day.
