Netherlands’ Curacao autonomous island will hold its parliamentary elections on March 19 amid political tensions between the ruling The Real Alternative Party (PAR) - MAN Party coalition and two opposition parties.
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The political crisis began in Feb. when all ten opposition lawmakers from Movement for the Future of Curacao (MFK) and People’s National Party (PNP) refused to attend virtual meetings with the ruling coalition representatives, who also have ten seats in Parliament.
The lawmakers’ boycott started when a PAR member left Parliament and the ruling party lost a majority temporarily. Twenty of the 21 seats were divided equally between opposition and coalition.
On Feb. 26, Prime Minister Eugene Rhuggenaath requested Netherlands intervention to swear in a tiebreaker lawmaker from the ruling coalition. “Democracy isn’t functioning on Curaçao as it should be,” he said then.
On Wednesday, the crisis arose after a Kenniscentrum Research Institute survey showed that opposition MFK and PNP could win most of the seats in the upcoming elections, and the PAR–MAN coalition could lose Parliament control.
The survey, which was conducted among over 1,600 of the citizens entitled to vote, showed only 9 percent of the over 100,000 inhabitants will vote for PAR-MAN.
“Over 80 percent of the surveyed voters said they will vote on March 19, a higher percentage than normal in this type of study. The rest say they will not go to the polls,” Kenniscentrum stated.