14 Oct 2023 at 07:47
Suriname is getting a new electoral system. The country’s parliament agreed to this major change on Friday evening. Until now, the country had a so-called district system. From 2025, every vote cast will have equal weight.
The old system was introduced in 1987. Because seats in parliament are divided on the basis of districts, districts with relatively few inhabitants have until now been relatively well represented in parliament. Political parties in sparsely populated districts therefore need far fewer votes for one of the 51 national seats than in more densely populated districts.
Thanks to this system, for example, Ronnie Brunswijk’s General Liberation and Development Party acquired eight seats in 2020 with barely 25,000 votes. While Gregory Russia’s National Party Suriname only won three seats with more than 32,000 votes.
The Constitutional Court has considered this system in recent years. At the end of 2022, parts of it turned out to be in violation of the Surinamese constitution and international treaties.
The court also stated that the distribution key of the old system was no longer correct because the number of inhabitants in the districts had changed considerably in recent decades. According to the court, positive discrimination against remote and underdeveloped districts should also come to an end.
Politics voted on the new system relatively quickly, because preparations for the 2025 elections will soon start.
After Friday’s vote in parliament, representatives spoke of a “historic moment” because of the unity and pace with which the political parties worked on the law changes.
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2023-10-14 05:47:41
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