Constancia also prepared to give up her seat

WILLEMSTAD – After party leader Gerrit Schotte, the number two on the list of Movementu Futuro Kòrsou (MFK), Jacinta Constancia, has also announced that she is prepared to give up her seat in parliament for the duration of an investigation against her if this frees the way for the MFK being part of talks about the formation of the next government.

Currently MAN, PAR, PNP and PS have signed letter declaring their preparedness to form the next government. these parties have 12 seats in the new 21-seat Curacao parliament.

Schotte’s party narrowly lost the elections to MAN with 12,839 vs. 12,671 votes. PAR won 11,949, PNP 7,017 and the disintegrated PS 5,323.

Within MFK, Schotte won the majority of votes (8,854), with Constancia a distant second at 688 votes and Gilmar Pisas in third with 656. None of the other MFK-candidates won more than 250 votes.

Because MAN signed an agreement with the other three parties, leaving MFK in the opposition, Schotte has gone far with an attempt to become a part of the next government after all. First he declared himself prepared to give up his seat in parliament, and now, according to a statement Schotte made in an interview, Constancia is prepared to do the same.

Constancia is a suspect in an investigation into fraud with the delivery of 40,000 mouth caps. She was Minister of Public Health. Her trial takes place next week, on October 17.

Schotte was sentenced in April to 3 years of imprisonment for corruption, money laundering and forgery. He has appealed the verdict.

Most parties that now have seats in the new parliament have declared earlier that they do not want to work with Schotte and his MFK

Schotte ignored previous advice to step down as a parliamentarian after his conviction, but he ignored it. Now he says that he stayed on for the sake of the party, adding that without him the MFK could have ended up with zero seats.