Outgoing coalition wins one seat more

From our correspondent

PHILIPSBURG — The result of Monday’s parliamentary elections leaves much to be desired. There were a lot of losers but no clear winners. The fifteen available seats in parliament are now split between seven parties. Remarkable the coalition that was sent home by the opposition after only seventeen days in office actually emerged with one additional seat, while the National Alliance (NA) and the United Peoples party (UP) had to make do with 3 and 2 seats respectively.

The new king of the castle seems to be Dr. Luc Mercelina, leader of the Unified Resilient St. Maarten Movement (URSM). He won an astonishing 1,315 votes, far more than any other candidate.

The party totals were: National Alliance 2,264, URSM 2,230, Democratic Party (DP) 2,069, United People’s party (UP) 2,038, Party for Progress (PfP) 1,942, Soualiga Action Movement (SAM) 1,249, Nation Opportunity Wealth (NOW) 1,245, Oualiga Movement for Change (OMC) 521 and Empire Culture Empowerment (ECE) 136.

This resulted in de following seat distribution in the new parliament: NA 3, URSM 3, DP 3,  PfP 2, UP 2, NOW 1, SAM 1, OMC and ECE both zero.

Two party leaders lost their seat in parliament: Silveria Jacobs (NA), who was outvoted by Egbert Doran, Darryl York and Ardwell Irion and NOW-founder Christophe Emmanuel who was outvoted by Lyndon Lewis. Noteworthy is also that DP-leader, Sarah Wescot-Williams, was also outvoted by the number 2 candidate on her list, Grisha Heyliger-Marten.

More news to follow in subsequent articles as we further analyze the August 19th election results.

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