The date was announced by president Chan Santokhi in his annual speech at the National Assembly on 1 October 2024.[1] After his resignation in mid-October 2024 as minister of Internal Affairs, Bronto Somohardjo[nl] was succeeded one and a half months later by Delano Landvreugd[nl] as minister and Maurits Hassankhan[nl] as deputy minister. Hassankhan was responsible for organizing the 2025 elections.[2]
Electoral system
The 51 seats in the National Assembly are elected using party-list proportional representation. Previous general elections had been held using ten multi-member constituencies, but following a ruling by the Constitutional Court in 2022 that judged that the malapportionment that existed was unconstitutional, it was decided to remedy this by abolishing the constituencies altogether, so that the legislature is elected from nationwide party lists. This case was started by Serena Essed.[3] The National Assembly approved the new electoral system on 13 October 2023.[4]
Among the major campaign issues was the management of potential revenues from recently discovered oil deposits, with National Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jennifer Geerlings-Simons pledging to require "all enterprises to work with Surinamese and buy Suriname products" as part of efforts to ensure access by the population to benefits from oil revenues.[6] Incumbent president Chan Santokhi, of the Progressive Reform Party (VHP), pledged to maintain Suriname's status as a carbon-negative country and use some of the oil revenues in the transition towards a green economy and related projects, noting that the reserves would be exhausted in 40 years. He also pledged to use the revenues for cash handouts under the "Royalties for Everyone" program.[7]
Results
Initial results showed that no party obtained a majority in the National Assembly, with the NDP winning 18 seats followed by the ruling VHP at 17. The remaining 16 seats were won by smaller parties. Turnout was estimated to be at least 58%.[8] On 27 May, the NDP announced that it had finalized a coalition agreement with the General Liberation and Development Party, the National Party of Suriname, Pertjajah Luhur, Alternative 2020 and the Brotherhood and Unity in Politics. The coalition had enough votes to elect Jennifer Geerlings-Simons as Suriname's first female president. Between them, the parties in the NDP-led coalition have 34 seats, exactly the two-thirds supermajority required to elect a president without the need for support from other parties.[9]
On 3 July, the VHP said that it would not put forward a candidate against Geerlings-Simons. At the time, she had been the only person to lodge her candidacy.[10] As expected, Geerlings-Simons was elected unopposed as president on 6 with NPS leader Gregory Rusland as vice president.[11]
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