The NDP, the party of the current Surinamese president Desi Bouterse, demands a recount of the votes of last Monday’s elections. He said that in an interview with the radio program on Thursday Bakana Tori on Radio SRS.
According to the current count, the Bouterse party would lose many seats and go from 26 seats in parliament to sixteen. Bouterse wants a recount of the polling stations that should then be broadcast live via television for Surinamese, reports Star news. Any irregularities should then be excluded. “It cannot be more open, fairer and transparent,” said the President.
Opposition party VHP would go from nine to twenty seats and become the big winner. Opposition leaders announced earlier today to be afraid for attempted fraud at the census. They accuse Bouterse of wanting to influence the elections. An official election result has still not been announced after three days after the elections.
VHP leader Chan Santokhi said at a news conference on Thursday that he was afraid that the government is looking for a recount. “You can guess what the result will be,” said the political leader, who has little confidence in the current state of affairs. At several dozen polling stations, the votes had to be recounted. Despite the fact that an election result has not yet been published, the VHP is already negotiating with other opposition parties about the formation of a new government.
Since Monday, supporters of the opposition parties have been on guard in the stands of the Anthony Nesty Sports Hall (ANS) in Paramaribo, where the reports of all individual polling stations are collected. They want to prevent tampering with results.
International observers have already announced that they will stay in the country longer.
‘NDP will accept final result’
Bouterse himself says that a recount has nothing to do with unsportsmanship and that his government will accept a final result from the Independent Electoral Office (OKB).
According to him, his party still has a good chance of winning and the opposition wants to discredit him and his party with the allegations of fraud. Bouterse himself states that his party is currently moving towards the eighteen seats and that the opposition is getting nervous and is therefore “running all kinds of scenarios”.
If, according to Bouterse, there were already irregularities in the elections, this would mean that he should already be at the forefront of the provisional counts. He did not expect to be behind the current counts. “But we need the endgame wait and people (the opposition, ed.) are hesitant about that. “
Bouterse’s NDP will formally protest to the OKB. He then determines whether there will indeed be a recount.
Election defeat can mean cell for Bouterse
An election defeat could force Bouterse to serve his 20-year prison sentence for involvement in the 1982 December murders. The president was convicted at the end of last year by a Surinamese court, but cannot be detained by his current position.
Improvement: An earlier version of this article stated that the NDP would be at ten seats in the preliminary count. That had to be sixteen seats. The message has been modified.
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