We made it past September 22nd.
The green machine got a well-deserved whopping. We told them, they did not listen. And fought even harder in the last weeks, screaming louder, paying off more men, bringing in more horses, all in a desperate attempt to stop the bleeding, and put humpty-dumpty together again.
Kids, fifty kids at a time, in the MinPres’ entourage, earning as much as Awg 7 an hour, walking around with the sweaty politician in the barrios. Almost 200 people, on his pay roll, fervently working social media to tell us how valuable #1 is. Not. You spent too much money. You lost control of your minions. Nepotism only gets you so far.
So from 33,103 voters in 2013, to 22,609 in 2017, that’s a substantial loss.
And a bit after 1am this morning the former MinPres announced he was going to the opposition benches. That’s a lesson in humility. He also said he was going to retire his post and allow the party to reorganize.
The people have spoken.
We will have a female MinPres next.
One of my friends explained to me why MEP did not grow over the past years and continues to linger around a certain mark, 21,298, in 2017. That is because voters who were born outside Aruba and the Dutch Islands, do not vote for MEP. Why? The answer lies in MEP’s slightly xenophobia, homophobia narrative, and its anti-foreigner sentiment. If you change your tune, and show some more love to strangeros, you might get their vote next time.
The surprise of the evening: The rivalry between POR & RED. I never saw them as rivals. One with a mega marketing budget and the other with a zero marketing budget, both achieving similar results. PaBien Ricardo Croes, you won a seat in Parliament on the wings of popular support, 4,015 votes, no flags, no stickers, no jingles. Your job is to keep them honest now, in Parliament.
POR with just 2 seats? All that star power, Otmar Oduber, Marisol Tromp and Andin Bikker, and the voters did not materialized, just 5,344 in total. The politicians must all be secretly disappointed, by the party’s underperformance. Nevertheless, POR is the natural coalition partner, and holds the key to the formation of our next government.
Next time, keep the polls open until 9pm, as the heat subsides. Many people couldn’t face the temperatures and remained in air-conditioning. You should have closed the polls at a later hour.
