PARAMARIBO, (Reuters) – Suriname’s President Desi Bouterse, a former military ruler convicted of drug trafficking in the Netherlands, looked on course for a second term after his party won a slim majority in parliamentary elections, according to the first results today.
Based on an unofficial but widely accepted preliminary tally of votes around the South American nation, Bouterse’s National Democratic Party won 26 or 27 seats in the 51-member assembly.
“The NDP has won the elections,” said Bouterse’s campaign leader, Ramon Abrahams.
The opposition coalition, on track to win 17 or 18 seats, accepted defeat.
“We did not make it. That is a disappointment. The voters have spoken and we have to respect that,” said Chandrikapersad Santokhi, a former justice minister and police commissioner who leads the V7 opposition coalition and was Bouterse’s main rival.
Although Bouterse, 69, needs a two-thirds majority in parliament to guarantee a second five-year term, he seemed likely to get that via allies or a separate mechanism whereby a special expanded assembly votes for president.
That process, however, could take months.
The local election board was due to give final formal results of Monday’s election within one or two weeks.
Convicted in absentia of drug trafficking by a court in the Netherlands in 1999, Bouterse always has denied wrongdoing.
He had also faced prosecution for the execution of 15 opponents in 1982 during his military rule, but the National Assembly passed an amnesty law in 2012 that gave him immunity. Santokhi, then police commissioner, had led the probe.
Bouterse’s son, Dino, was sentenced in March to 16-1/4 years in prison, after pleading guilty last August to U.S. charges that he tried to offer a base to the Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah.
Bouterse, a former sergeant who took part in two coups in 1980 and 1990, said Suriname’s 550,000 people had benefited economically in the last five years. But opponents accuse his government of cronyism and corruption.
