Netherlands Antilles hold final elections
by Marvin Hokstam

The Associated Press    Translate This Article
30 January 2006

PHILIPSBURG, St. Maarten (AP) - Five Caribbean islands on Friday held their last parliamentary elections as members of a unified Netherlands Antilles.

The islands—Curacao, St. Maarten, Bonaire, Saba and St. Eustatius—have set a target date of July 1, 2007 for breaking off to form their own governments.

The new parliament will shepherd the federation to that end.

The party of former Prime Minister Etienne Ys, Antillean Restructuring, appeared to have won five of Curacao's 14 seats, a gain of one from the last elections. The leftist New Antilles Movement won three seats, and three other parties earned two seats each.

Results for the other islands were not expected until Saturday.

The Netherlands Antilles has been a single autonomous member of the Netherlands Kingdom under Dutch military protection.

But under a new structure approved in December, Curacao and St. Maarten will become separate, autonomous members of the kingdom, while Bonaire, Saba and St. Eustatius are due to become Kingdom Islands—a newly created status that has yet to be defined.

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.





Translation software is not perfect; however if you would like to try it, you can translate this page using:

(Google) Select a language English to Afrikaans English to Albanian English to Arabic English to Belarusian English to Bulgarian English to Catalan English to Chinese (Simplified) English to Chinese (Traditional) English to Croatian English to Czech English to Danish English to Dutch English to Estonian English to Filipino English to Finnish English to French English to Galician English to German English to Greek English to Hebrew English to Hindi English to Hungarian English to Icelandic English to Indonesian English to Irish English to Italian English to Japanese English to Korean English to Latvian English to Lithuanian English to Macedonian English to Malay English to Maltese English to Norwegian English to Persian English to Polish English to Portuguese English to Romanian English to Russian English to Serbian English to Slovak English to Slovenian English to Spanish English to Swahili English to Swedish English to Thai English to Turkish English to Ukrainian English to Vietnamese English to Welsh English to Yiddish

(Altavista babelfish) Select a languageEnglish to Chinese-simpEnglish to Chinese-tradEnglish to DutchEnglish to PortugueseEnglish to FrenchEnglish to GermanEnglish to GreekEnglish to ItalianEnglish to JapaneseEnglish to KoreanEnglish to RussianEnglish to Spanish

Send Good News to Global Good News.

Your comments.