ORANJESTAD - The Aruban party AVP, led by former Prime Minister Mike Eman, is demanding a recount of the votes cast during Friday's parliamentary elections. The party suspects irregularities in the count. The party mentions the relatively large number of invalid votes in particular as striking.
Almost 1,000 votes were declared invalid on Friday and, according to the AVP, the party just missed a few dozen votes to get an extra seat.
The MEP of current outgoing Prime Minister Evelyn Wever-Croes received a total of 9 seats with 20,701 votes. The AVP received 2,353 votes less and gained no less than two seats less, namely 7. A total of 58,599 valid votes were cast, a turnout of over 83 percent.
The party suspects that there is intent in declaring the votes invalid, which puts the party at a serious disadvantage. A petition has now been launched to demand a recount. Party leader Eman had already indicated that, according to him, the Public Prosecution Service is against the AVP, because they mainly investigate members of that party for corruption. This usually happens just before elections.
In the meantime, Governor Alfonso Boekhoudt has already started a consultation round on Monday to form a new government. Boekhoudt has already spoken to the chairman of the Advisory Council and the chairman of the parliament and also talks to the leaders of the five parties in the new parliament. In addition to MEP and AVP, these are the new parties MAS, RAIZ and Accion21.
These three small parties have indicated that they will work together to see through which major party they can implement as many of their positions as possible in a coalition. MEP and AVP have once again confirmed that they will not join a coalition together. That gives the bloc of the three new parties a lot of power in forming a coalition.