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51 seats in theNational Assembly 26 seats needed for a majority | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below.
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General elections were held inSuriname on 25 November 1987. They were the first held in the country since the first post-independence elections in1977,[1] and the first since a new constitution was approved in a referendum helda month earlier.
The Front for Democracy and Development, an alliance of theNational Party of Suriname (NPS), theProgressive Reform Party (VHP) and theParty for National Unity and Solidarity (KTPI),[2] won a decisive victory with 40 of the 51 seats with 86% of the vote, the largest vote share achieved by a Surinamese party or alliance since independence in 1975. TheNational Democratic Party, the political vehicle ofDesi Bouterse, the country'sde facto leader since a1980 coup, finished a distant second with three seats. Voter turnout was 85%.
| Party | Votes | % | Seats | +/– | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front for Democracy and Development (VHP–NPS–KTPI)[a] | 147,196 | 85.50 | 40 | +10 | |
| National Democratic Party | 16,000 | 9.29 | 3 | New | |
| Progressive Workers' and Farmers' Union | 2,910 | 1.69 | 4 | +4 | |
| Surinamese Labour Party | 2,704 | 1.57 | 0 | New | |
| Pendawa Lima | 2,676 | 1.55 | 4 | – | |
| Partij Perbangunan Rakjat Suriname | 664 | 0.39 | 0 | New | |
| Total | 172,150 | 100.00 | 51 | +12 | |
| Valid votes | 172,130 | 97.23 | |||
| Invalid/blank votes | 4,895 | 2.77 | |||
| Total votes | 177,025 | 100.00 | |||
| Registered voters/turnout | 208,356 | 84.96 | |||
| Source: Nohlen[b] | |||||
At its first session on 13 January 1988, the National Assembly elected the VHP'sRamsewak Shankar as president.Henck Arron of the NPS, who had led the country asPrime Minister from independence in 1975 until the 1980 coup, became vice president.[4] Their election was assured after the Front for Democracy and Development won 78 percent of the seats at the election. This was enough for Shankar to be elected without the need for support from other blocs; the new constitution required the president to be elected by a two-thirdssupermajority of the Assembly. To date, this is the only time under Suriname's present constitution that a party or alliance has won enough seats on its own to elect a president.
However, Shankar and Arron only held office for less than two years before being overthrown in 1990 inanother coup engineered by Bouterse.[5]
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