Despite yesterday seeing images of members of the military practicing their parade and other preparations for the ceremony of inauguration of a New Parliamentary Year, which was programmed for today, the retirement of the government of Aruba means that no New Parliamentary Year will be inaugurated today.
At the same time, this means that the newly elected president of Parliament, Raymond Kamperveen, lost his position barely a few hours after being elected yesterday. With this, Kamperveen holds the record for the shortest presidency of Parliament in the history of Aruba.
Aruba elects a legislature on the national level. Parliament (Staten) has 21 members,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Aruba elected for a four-year term by Open list Party-list proportional representation. Seats are distributed between parties that have gained at least one full quota (1/21, or approximately 4.76% of the vote) using the Hagenbach-Bischoff system (a variant of the D’Hondt method).
Aruba has a multi-party system, with two or three strong parties and a third party that is electorally successful. In 2021, the MEP-party won the general election and formed a coalition government with the Raiz-party, which had a mandate until 2025.
Every year, the members of Parliament vote for a new president for Parliament. This year, the senior coalition partner MEP wanted to extend the presidency of Edgard Vrolijk, while the junior coalition partner requested anyone but Vrolijk. This resulted in a political standoff within the coalition, with both parties announcing late at night on Monday that they were “ready for elections” if they couldn’t come to an agreement on the presidency.
Yesterday morning, after the voting for the new president of Parliament took place, giving the presidency to leader of the Raiz-fraction, Raymond Kamperveen, prime minister Evelyn Wever-Croes and the rest of her MEP ministers in government requested to the Governor of Aruba to retire from their positions. This means that Aruba no longer has a government – replaced by a caretaker government – and new elections are to be held on the 6th of december 2024.
