Weekly Report - 28 May 2015 (WR-15-21)

President Desi Bouterse’s Nationale Democratische Partij (NDP) won a decisive victory in general elections on 25 May. For the first time in Suriname’s electoral history a single party won an outright majority: the NDP took 27 seats in the 51-seat national assembly. Despite this achievement, it fell seven seats shy of the two-thirds majority required in the assembly to elect Bouterse. He could obtain these by means of an alliance with smaller parties or avoid being beholden to any other party by allowing the 895-member United People’s Assembly (Verenigde Volksvergadering), comprising the national assembly, district and local councils, to elect him as the NDP should have the requisite simple majority here.

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