WILLEMSTAD - Several political parties have voiced their dissatisfaction in local media with the situation during last weekend's pre-elections or primaries. Several parties missed the number of votes required to participate in the elections and now want a recount.
Primary elections took place on January 30 and 31, during which voters could vote to give their support to one of the sixteen new parties that want to participate in the parliamentary elections on March 19. That was possible with a minimum of 789 votes. A total of eight parties obtained the required number of votes.
Movementu KAS ended with 746 votes, 43 votes short to go to the parliamentary elections and the party therefore wants a recount. Humphrey Davelaar party leader of Movementu KAS has announced that he will request a recount via an official letter to the Supreme Electoral Council. Davelaar, who was the leader of the PNP party during the last election, believes that an extremely large number of votes have been declared invalid, namely 600 out of a total of almost 20,000 votes cast.
According to Davelaar, this is because there was too little information about how the ballots should be used prior to the primaries. As a result, according to him, the ballots were handled incorrectly.
"Support elections in Curaçao are often referred to as 'firmamentu di lista' (list signing)", Davelaar explains. "Based on that, many people have signed the box at the bottom right, making it invalid." In addition to a recount, Davelaar also wants to inspect the invalid ballots.
Jaime Cordoba, number two on the list of the Un Korsou Nobo (UKN) party that obtained 520 votes, is also unhappy about the number of invalid votes. Cordoba, who until recently sat on behalf of Pueblo Soberano in parliament - and has now declared itself independent - finds it a shame that 600 votes have been declared invalid.
"600 votes is 3% of the total", Cordoba explains. "By simply declaring them invalid, parties are prevented from obtaining their number of votes to participate in the parliamentary election. Perhaps 200 of those invalid votes were destined for our party and we could have gone through with that." Cordoba goes on to say that the Supreme Electoral Council must take responsibility. According to him, declaring the 600 ballots invalid is a mistake.
Another party that is dissatisfied with the progress of the support elections is Union i Progreso (UP). This party received 627 votes. Party leader Elvis de Andrade says he has hard evidence that his party has received sufficient preferential votes; 790 votes to be exact.
Elvis de Andrade: "We have asked all our voters to take a picture of their vote for our party and send it to us. We have 790 photos showing that we have been voted for and we will show them to the Electoral Council." Union i Progresso also says it wants to inspect the invalid ballot papers.
