Suri­name's In­de­pen­dent Elec­toral Of­fice (OKB) has ac­knowl­edged short­com­ings in at least one polling sta­tion, but dis­missed sug­ges­tions of ma­nip­u­la­tion or fraud, as vot­ers in the Dutch-speak­ing Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­try still await the fi­nal re­sults of the elec­tions held on Sun­day.

In a state­ment, the OKB said that it is im­por­tant to pro­vide fur­ther ex­pla­na­tion re­gard­ing the sit­u­a­tion at polling sta­tion 614 in the Broko­pon­do dis­trict, af­ter one of the can­di­dates, Ronald Pansa, said his con­cerns were not be­ing tak­en se­ri­ous­ly.

“The con­cerns ex­pressed by can­di­date Ronald Pansa have been re­ceived and are not tak­en light­ly. The OKB ac­knowl­edges that the con­di­tions at polling sta­tion 614 were sub­op­ti­mal and that this has led to un­der­stand­able frus­tra­tions. At the same time, we em­pha­sise that there are no in­di­ca­tions that there has been de­lib­er­ate ma­nip­u­la­tion or fraud.,” the OKB said in a state­ment.

Pansa had com­plained in the me­dia about the state of af­fairs at the polling sta­tion about a sig­nif­i­cant de­lay in the vot­ing and count­ing process dur­ing the ear­ly hours of Mon­day.

But the OKB said, “the cause of this is pri­mar­i­ly a lack of ex­pe­ri­ence and ex­per­tise among the polling sta­tion staff, which led to lo­gis­ti­cal and pro­ce­dur­al chal­lenges”.

It said that in or­der to en­sure the con­ti­nu­ity of the process, the OKB su­per­vi­sor in­ter­vened at var­i­ous times.

“The count was checked and cor­rect­ed sev­er­al times, with the aim of ar­riv­ing at a re­li­able and ver­i­fi­able re­sult. It is ad­mit­ted that due to the com­bi­na­tion of time pres­sure, fa­tigue and pub­lic pres­sure, it was de­cid­ed at a cer­tain point to pub­lish the pro­vi­sion­al re­sults on a board pend­ing the for­mal com­ple­tion of the re­port.

“At around eight o’clock in the morn­ing on Mon­day, the re­port could fi­nal­ly be fi­nalised and made pub­lic, in ac­cor­dance with the ap­plic­a­ble pro­ce­dures,” the OKB said,  call­ing on all stake­hold­ers to con­tribute con­struc­tive­ly to the elec­tion process, “in the in­ter­est of our democ­ra­cy.

“The OKB will thor­ough­ly eval­u­ate this in­ci­dent and, where nec­es­sary, make rec­om­men­da­tions to im­ple­ment fu­ture im­prove­ments in the or­gan­i­sa­tion and train­ing of polling sta­tion staff. Trans­paren­cy, in­tegri­ty and re­li­a­bil­i­ty re­main core val­ues for the OKB in the per­for­mance of its con­sti­tu­tion­al task,” it added.

Mean­while, with the fi­nal re­sults still pend­ing, both the rul­ing Pro­gres­sive Re­form Par­ty  (VHP) of Pres­i­dent Chan­drikaper­sad “Chan” San­tokhi and the main op­po­si­tion Na­tion­al De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (NDP) that was once led by late for­mer pres­i­dent Dési Bouterse, are both look­ing at the pos­si­bil­i­ties of form­ing a coali­tion gov­ern­ment.

NDP vice-chair­man, Ash­win Ad­hin, says the par­ty sup­ports chair­woman, Jen­nifer Geer­lings-Si­mons, as pres­i­den­tial can­di­date.

“I had in­di­cat­ed that the ma­jor­i­ty of votes de­ter­mines the can­di­date. She has the most votes, so a man is a man, a word is a word,” Ad­hin said, who had al­so in­di­cat­ed that he want­ed to have been elect­ed as pres­i­dent.

Ad­hin said that the fo­cus is now on form­ing a coali­tion, and that Si­mons is lead­ing that. The vice-chair­man in­di­cates that he is con­fi­dent that this phase, in which the par­ty finds it­self af­ter the pre­lim­i­nary elec­tion re­sults, will al­so be brought to a suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion.

Mean­while, the NDP is call­ing for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the way in which the bal­lot box ma­te­r­i­al had been de­liv­ered from the var­i­ous polling sta­tions in the Wan­i­ca dis­trict to the main polling sta­tion.

It said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion must be con­duct­ed in­to how it was pos­si­ble that the de­liv­ery of the ma­te­r­i­al from 148 polling sta­tions was not com­plet­ed un­til 9:30 a.m. the next day.

Late Mon­day, a group of con­cerned NDP mem­bers went to the main polling sta­tion call­ing on the chair­man of the main polling sta­tion, Bholanath Narain, for an ex­pla­na­tion.

The pre­lim­i­nary fig­ures show that the out­go­ing coali­tion gov­ern­ment and the NDP have so far won 18 seats each in the 51-mem­ber Na­tion­al As­sem­bly.

Among the suc­cess­ful can­di­dates so far is In­grid Bouterse-Waldring, the wid­ow of the for­mer pres­i­dent, who was elect­ed with pref­er­en­tial votes in this elec­tion. On her Face­book page, she thanked the pop­u­la­tion for their con­fi­dence in her and the NDP.

Just un­der 400,000 reg­is­tered vot­ers were el­i­gi­ble to cast their bal­lots across the coun­try and once the new par­lia­ment is seat­ed, law­mak­ers will choose Suri­name’s next pres­i­dent and vice-pres­i­dent in the com­ing weeks.

PARA­MARI­BO,  Suri­name, May 27,  CMC –

CMC/ic/ir/2025